THE DEAD SOUL: A Thriller

by M. William Phelps

  “Okay, Lieutenant.” Dickie took a sip of his coffee. Not a chance.

  “It looks to me like we got a connection now to St. Paul’s Church, with this O’Keefe girl’s father. Isn’t that Cooper’s spiritual turf?”

  “I’m a non-believer, sir … sorry.”

  “If that’s his church, Shaughnessy”—a blue walked over, asked Matikas to sign something—“Cooper needs to step back and maybe, if this ever goes to court—a big if, mind you—we might not run into legal trouble. Make sure you two clear this with the DA before Cooper runs over there badgering those clergymen. I don’t need the Catholic Church up my ass.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Briefcase in hand, Matikas stomped into his office. Slammed the door behind him. Dickie went to the bathroom. Came back. Sat at his desk.

  Callahan, the day desk sergeant, mentioned that Barton Colby was on the phone.

  Dickie picked up the line.

  The kid still didn’t have any idea what “mm” stood for, he said, but recalled something about the guy Lisa met online. He was an older dude, Barton said, “Maybe like, thirty-five or even forty.”

  “Yeah, that’s old all right. What was it that she bought?”

  His name was Nick Miller. A stocky man who had helped Lisa Marie locate a nursery on the other side of Worcester that sold rare flowers. Miller called into the police once he realized Lisa had been murdered. Mr. and Mrs. Taylor confirmed that Mr. Taylor drove Lisa to Worcester a week before her death to meet with Miller. He had flowers, all right, but not what Lisa wanted. Mr. Taylor never inquired what type of flowers his daughter was looking for, only that she get there and back safely—without making a stop by her old boyfriend’s house.

  “That’s n-m, though,” Barton said. “Nick Miller … mm doesn’t fit.”

  Dickie looked down at his keyboard. The n was right next to the m. Typo, perhaps? “We checked Nick out, Barton. Nothing there. But thanks for the call. Keep thinking, kid. Hopefully, it’ll come to you before we lose another girl.”

  Dickie hung up.

  Anastasia Rossi sat on Dickie’s desk and faced him.

  “Fancy seeing you here, missy. Coffee?”

  Anastasia shook her head. Opened the lid. “Black. You know me well, Shaughnessy. Thanks.” Jumped off Dickie’s desk.

  “Anything new?”

  She put her bag down by her chair. Sat behind her desk, swiveled toward Dickie. He leaned back in his chair to listen, elbow on the armrest, palm holding up his chin.

  “I heard from the lab on that paint chip.”

  “Stuck on that, huh, Rossi? It could have been left there by a tourist. Blew in with a gust of Bean Town wind.”

  “Right you are. Forget it, then.” She turned. Acted as if she was working on something.

  “Come on, Rossi. You gotta be able to take it. What ’a ya got?”

  She looked up. “It’s from a state vehicle. Special brand of metallic paint used on cop cars, government vehicles, and those vans the towns and cities use for utility jobs.”

  “That could mean a thousand different things. Tell me something straight, Rossi. Something I can use right now.”

  She had anticipated that reaction. “How ‘bout that I narrowed it down, using computer records I pulled from the Net last night, to about four hundred vehicles from the postal service. Worcester, actually. They service most of the vehicles used throughout the city. I spoke to a guy there late last night, second shifter, who told me that this type of paint, speaking generally, was used on the Jeeps and vans to make those red, white and blue pinstripes. Thing is, they discontinued the paint about ten years ago and went back to pin-striping stickers.”

  “Let me guess—lead-based, right?”

  “Bingo.”

  “Not bad, Rossi. Not bad at all. So we know our guy, if a tourist didn’t leave it behind, is driving a ten-year-old (or more) vehicle. And that he could even work for the post office.” That did narrow the search. “What about our professor? Anything new out of him?”

  Anastasia tossed a file on Dickie’s desk, about thirty pages thick. “There’s a transcript in there of my last phone call with Shelton, a few email exchanges, along with some Google research. You’ll enjoy it.”

  “Do you sleep?”

  She smiled.

  37

  Thursday, September 11 - 10:31 A.M.

  Dickie took a radio call from Jake not long after speaking with Anastasia. “Meet me in Framingham. The Kohl’s parking lot on Route Nine. Bring two shotguns from the cage.”

  “You got it.”

  Dickie grabbed the weapons, two uniforms, and took off.

  Forty-five minutes later, Dickie hopped in Jake’s Crown Vic as shoppers walked out of Kohl’s in front of them. The blues followed in another vehicle.

  No lights. No sirens.

  Stealth.

  The guy Bags Cane gave to Jake lived in a gated, million-dollar contemporary laid out on about fifty acres. There was a brand-new cherry red Cadillac in the driveway, a pair of steer horns on the front hood, twenty-two-inch gold rims with tires so thin they looked like rubber bands.

  Jake and the team parked down the road from the house. Jake explained the situation Bags Cane had related to him. This guy was a Class A scumbag. He wasn’t their guy, but he might know something. Anyway, getting a piece of garbage like this off the street was all in a good day’s work. Jake could sense another victim of the Optimist’s coming. Any lead—no matter how remote—was worth checking out.

  The clock was ticking.

  “No search warrant?”

  Jake looked at Dickie. Mr. By-the-book.

  “Probable cause in the scope of a murder investigation.”

  “Matikas know?”

  Jake didn’t answer.

  They hopped the four-foot chain-link fence. Dickie had a rough go of it and fell behind.

  Flanking the gate on each side, they walked along the driveway. There was a line of black solar lights stuck in the ground—gigantic mushrooms—near a row of evergreens. A bread-crumb trail to the front door.

  Jake explained how he wanted things to go down.

  The two blues agreed.

  Dickie came up, huffing and puffing.

  Jake knocked on the door with the barrel end of his shotgun.

  It opened. The guy stood in front of them wearing a bathrobe untied. Boxer shorts. Fuzzy slippers. He was smoking a cigarette. Looked as though he hadn’t showered in days.

  Jake and Dickie looked at each other: Get a load of this.

  Vice gave Dickie his name after Jake provided an address. Tad “Cowboy” Peterson, a real piece of shit if there ever was one. Tad had moved into the area two years ago. He had run a whorehouse in Las Vegas. Got busted for providing bowls of cocaine to his johns during the Tony Montana-Scarface era. Did five years, was granted an early release. Made some money selling the ranch. Brought his sleaze show east.

  “What do you want?” Tad Peterson said. He did not look alarmed. “I saw all of you on my security cam. Pretty funny shit, actually.”

  Jake said, “Just to talk, Tad. Nothing else.”

  “Put the weapons away.”

  “Come on, Tad. You know we can’t do that. Just want to chat a little bit about a few girlfriends of yours.”

  There was a beat of tense silence. No one said anything.

  The door popped open. Tad beckoned them inside, turning his back, walking away.

  The living room just beyond the foyer looked like something out of a 70s porn film. Furry shag rugs. Stuffed animal heads hung from the walls. Pinball machine. Sunken floor with a projection big-screen television in one corner. Incense burning on plates. Multi-colored wax candles on every table.

  “Where’s the lava lamp?” Dickie said, laughing at his own joke.

  “You ever leave here, Tad?” Jake didn’t want cause a panic. He came across relaxed, calm. “We’d like to look around. That okay with you?”

  “Wait a minute, man. You got a warrant?” />
  “No. Why, we going to need one? Warrants involve judges. Charges. We just thought we’d pop in and have a friendly conversation. But if you insist on a warrant, hell, we can get that done.”

  Peterson thought about it. He could read Jake. He’d been shaken down all his life by country cops, unlike Jake Cooper, he had no trouble paying off. After considering the alternative, “Yeah, go ahead,” he said. “Have a look.”

  “Dickie, take a blue and search the bedroom upstairs.”

  “Wait a freakin’ minute,” Peterson said, moving closer toward Jake.

  “So, Tad,” Jake said, “you gonna set some boundaries now?” Jake cracked his shot gun in half, checked the chamber with one eye squinted, snapped it back in place with one arm.

  “Ah, shit …” Peterson said, dropping his head.

  Jake could smell that unmistakable aroma of crack cocaine. He had lived in Southie too many years. You walk into a housing project hallway. Around the playgrounds. You smell someone blowing crack smoke. Once it got on your skin, your clothes, in your hair, like a day-old corpse in a stuffy apartment sitting underneath your nose a day later, there was no getting rid of it.

  A skinny redhead with orange lips and freckled pale skin came out of the kitchen. She was Nicole Kidman-tall. Half-naked, she wore a thong, wife-beater T-shirt. Her purple nipples popped through the cotton like raisins. She looked as if she’d been up all night. When she spied Jake standing there, Dickie and a cop on their way upstairs, she turned around and headed back into the kitchen.

  “Why don’t you join us?” the blue with Jake said.

  Tad Peterson was on the phone with his lawyer. “Yup, okay. No, I will.”

  Jake looked around. “You know why we’re here, Tad, right?”

  Peterson lit another Marlboro with the butt end of the one he’d just finished. Blew the smoke off to his right side. Didn’t say anything.

  Jake moved closer. Peterson stepped up, took another drag, blew smoke in Jake’s face.

  “Simple stuff, Tad. Just answer some questions and we’re out of here. That simple.”

  “Come on, man. Nothin’ is ever that easy with cops.”

  Dickie came down the stairs with a glass bowl, spoon burned black on the bottom, and several small beer-bottle brown vials of what appeared to be crack. The blue behind him had a two-liter plastic Coke bottle, half full of water, a hole cut in the side, tin foil stuffed inside. A makeshift bong.

  “That crack is so nineteen-nineties, Tad.” Jake shook his head.

  “Get a look at her,” Dickie said of the redhead sitting on the couch, “higher than Hosanna, huh, Jake?”

  “Very funny, Dick.”

  “An hour and I’ll be out,” Peterson said in his quick and breathy voice. He meant jail.

  “Look, tell me about your fetish for cutting on women. Or should we ask your girlfriend here, instead?” Jake looked down at her shins. Scabs and scars. He knew them from the jimmy-jam leg itch junkies get, not from cutting, but went with it, anyway.

  Tad Peterson laughed. “Different strokes for—”

  Jake bumped Peterson in his pigeon chest, pushing him back against the wall. Got right in his face. Jake was at least a foot taller. “Tad, Bags Cane has been talking since he got out of the joint.” Peterson and the red head looked at each other quickly. “Come on, you read the papers lately?”

  “Me? No way.”

  “We got ourselves a witness putting you in the Public Garden with that young girl. Now, we know you didn’t kill her, Tad.”

  “Listen, I had nothing to do with that shit. You know that. What is this?” Peterson pulled away. Jake let him go. “I’m calling my lawyer back.” He went for the phone.

  “Sit down, Tad,” Jake said. His voice ratcheted up a notch. Then he took Tad’s cordless phone and threw it at the sliding glass door as hard as he could, shattering the glass.

  Dickie went into the kitchen. Returned with a knife he said he found underneath the sink. He held it out in front of Peterson by the tip with a hankie.

  “The boys in forensics are going to love this.” Dickie held it up. “Bag that up for me, fellas. Then call in and get us that signed search warrant we’ll need.”

  “Get Tad into the car and get him downtown.” Jake sat on the couch. Dropped his head. Another dead end. Tad Peterson and his girlfriend were escorted out of the house.

  “What do you think, boss?” Dickie asked. He had his shotgun cradled over his shoulder like a hunter.

  “Have the boys interrogate him all day, but he doesn’t know a thing.” Jake rubbed his right hand through his hair and blew a long-winded sigh.

  38

  Thursday, September 11 - 11:53 A.M.

  Inside D-15, Jake had his hand on the doorknob into his office, when Matikas emerged from around the corner.

  “Now, Cooper. Let’s go.”

  Jake had his back toward the lieutenant. He dropped his head. Under his breath, “Shit. Come on.”

  “I warned you last night on the phone not to blow me off, damn it all.”

  Jake looked at the whitewashed walls in Matikas’s office. They were a blurry shade of gray from not being painted or cleaned. Two chairs faced Matikas’s oak desk. Jake sat opposite the lieutenant and explained how his connection to St. Paul’s was not going make one bit of a difference when it came time to prosecute. Anyway, where was their suspect? They were far from having to worry about prosecuting a serial killer they had not yet captured.

  “If you recall, Cooper, you messed up the last time I put you in charge of a high-profile murder case. You ever consider that? I stuck my ass out here—again!”

  Cheap shot.

  Jake looked down at his shoes. He saw the little girl’s face. Dirt covering her eyes. He heard Dr. Kelsey a day after. “We found dirt in her lungs, Cooper, sorry. That means she was alive when she was buried. She was breathing.”

  “Don’t go there, Ray.”

  “No? Why, Cooper? You going crazy on me again?” Matikas threw his hands up in an it’s-not-even-worth-it gesture.

  Jake stood to leave.

  “Sit. Down.”

  Jake stopped. Turned. Stood, instead.

  “I was doing my job,” Jake explained. “Doesn’t matter that I was a parish member of St. Paul’s. The DA agrees with me, Ray. Non-issue. Now, what else do you want?”

  Matikas bounced an index finger off his pursed lips. “Fine, but listen. There’s been some talk downtown about Mo that is not, let’s say, in his favor. What do you know about him being tied to Mancini and that security company? I can’t have them coming after you—not now, during this investigation. If we make an arrest and then you’re sucked into that Mo vacuum by Internal Affairs, I won’t be able to save your ass. We’re done. I’m thinking of taking you off this case anyway, until this thing with Mo is finished.”

  Jake became animated. “What? No, Ray. You cannot do that.” He stopped talking. Was the lieutenant was playing him? “You think I’m going to give you Mo, is that it? What the hell is wrong with you? Forget Mo. Allow me to do my job here.” Jake went to walk out of the room for a second time.

  Security company? He was floored by this revelation. It was the first he had heard of it. He hadn’t thought about the situation much lately, but it made sense now. Mancini was the ruse. Mo—and maybe Jake, too—was in deeper than Jake had ever considered.

  “Your nose better be clean with this Mo thing, Cooper. I’m hearing things about you I don’t like.”

  Jake considered walking away without answering that little jab. But he stood by the door. How could Ray know? Was it a bluff to get information?

  Matikas walked over to the tall picture window in back of his desk. He looked down at the parking lot below. He had a serious buzz to his voice. Concern. Jake hadn’t left. “You need to focus on getting this butcher off my streets,” the lieutenant said. “Killing a deacon’s daughter and a Harvard professor’s little girl doesn’t sit well with brass. The captain is up my ass. He wants answers
, Jake. You got anything? Don’t mess with me. I’m pleading with you here. My ass is on the line, too. What do we have?”

  Jake could hear the anguish in the lieutenant’s voice. He was being pressured. He needed to produce. It seemed the entire plight of D-15 was riding on this one case.

  “I have a few leads, Ray. But I need to get the hell out of here and work them.”

  “You have two days to get me something I can use to quiet the captain down. After that, well,” Matikas walked away from the window, put both palms on his desk, propped himself up, “I cannot be responsible for where you end up. I’ll hold off HQ and Mo’s keepers as long as I can. But no promises.” He pointed his index finger into the desk, accentuating each word. “One more thing. Don’t be barging into anybody’s home again without a freakin’ search warrant.”

  “Peterson’s scum.” Jake paused. Then: “I’m clean on the Mo thing, Ray. I won’t take that hit.”

  “Where is Mo now?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “The guy is never around. Comes and goes from this office like he doesn’t work here.”

  Jake went to grab the door and noticed a Boston Herald article framed on the wall. Matikas had rescued a few kids from a warehouse fire. There was a photo of him with the mayor below it. The guy was considered a hero at one time.

  “I can look into that thing about Mo,” Jake said in a near-whisper. He wasn’t facing Matikas.

  “Are we clear where we stand with Mo, Jake? I’m not going to mention this again. And I certainly am not going down for that sonofabitch.”

  “Clear, Ray.”

  “You better do something, hotshot. Or they won’t be as friendly to you as they have been with your rabbi there. You’ll be out on your ass, with charges to follow. Don’t matter what you did or didn’t do. They want you, Jake, you’re history. You’re from the old Southie boys club—don’t ever forget that.”

  Jake pushed the door open. He wanted to turn and scream at Matikas. Tell him to go to hell. Then run to brass downtown and let them all know he was waiting for them anytime they wanted to come after him. And for a moment, Jake Cooper considered walking down the hall, packing up his things and leaving. Never coming back.