“Right, Daddy.”
Shutting off the radio, Jake pulled into the dirt driveway leading to the cottage. The vacation was almost over.
Father and son got out and slammed the truck doors at the same time, as if they had rehearsed the move. Jake opened the whining screen door to the cottage and Brendan walked in before him underneath Jake’s arm.
Dawn sat at the table reading the Sunday paper, looking over her shoulder, half-smiling. She had a quilt her mother had sent draped over her back. She did not get up. “Catch anything?”
Jake and Brendan took off their jackets. “Nope.”
“Missed a whopper.” Brendan spread his arms out to show his mother how big the fish “probably” was.
“Tellin’ fish tales already, huh, kiddo?”
Jake kissed Dawn on the cheek. She clutched his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. Brendan got himself a Coke.
The letter Mo sent posthumously arrived a day after he blew his brains out. It sat on the table in front of Jake. He had brought it with him, along with his final report. He read the letter several times, but wanted to quote from it in his report. They were scheduled to head back to Boston in two days. Jake needed to be done with this case. It was time to move on.
Mo was no wordsmith, but his points were clear and concise. Jake did the legwork to check out the claims Mo had made in the letter. All of it turned out to be more or less fact.
It was kickbacks, as Jake had originally thought. Mo took money from Mancini Construction, who was responsible for the collapse in the Ted Williams Tunnel that killed two members of the Carmichael family. The problem—besides enormous greed—was the concrete, which was not up to spec. The company had saved hundreds of thousands of dollars using the cheap stuff. Mo made sure all the permits and paperwork were in order by paying off several inspectors. He picked up the bottle again because he knew the feds were in the process of indicting him. HQ had never considered going after Jake, as IA had it under good information that Jake didn’t know what he was doing when he picked up and delivered packages for Mo. You solve the state’s most high-profile serial-killer case and you are entitled to a little leeway and under-the-rug sweeping. Jake wasn’t sure he was continuing in his role as a cop anyway.
Shaking his head for the umpteenth time, Jake couldn’t believe who had helped Mo. The last person Jake would have ever suspected of being on the take was Lieutenant Ray Matikas. Apparently, Matikas knew people who helped fix some of the paperwork. It was Matikas who found Mo dead and walked out of his house with a file the feds later found in Matikas’s car.
Sunshine.
Dawn got up from the dining room table. Walked to the couch, leaned over Jake’s back. “Whatcha reading?”
“Old news.” Jake said, smiling. “Go take a nap. You need your rest.”
94
Sunday, October 6 –7:21 P.M.
Dickie stood at the podium inside the BPD union hall on Congress Street. “Please hold your applause.” He had to repeat the statement several times. “Please.”
Standing over Dickie’s shoulders, looking sheepish in suits two sizes too small, were Adam Bales and Russel Cannon. Both men were humbled by the loud cheers, slaps on the back and anonymous atta-boys from the crowd. The Globe and Herald magazine had written about the two men. They were interviewed on the CBS Nightly News and WBZ-TV’s Crime Night Live. Heck, even Matt Lauer invited them on the Today Show, but they refused.
Neither man cared for all the attention. They were fishermen, first and foremost. That would never change. Their fathers and grandfathers fished. They would teach their children to do the same. It was intertwined in their DNA.
“Dawn Cooper is alive and well today,” Dickie said into the microphone, looking behind him, “because of the heroism displayed by these two gentlemen.” Applause broke out as the men looked at each other. “I want to read something Detective Cooper emailed me this morning. He couldn’t be here. He’s up north with his wife and son. I quote, ‘To Mr. Bales and Mr. Cannon, my wife and I want to express our gratitude for what you did that morning. The only reason you came upon that sinking boat, my wife close to drowning, was because you were out on the ocean doing what you love. You could have driven by, called the Coast Guard and waited it out. You didn’t. You risked your lives to save my wife, same as you do every day out on the Grand Banks for the sake of feeding your families. Thank you.’ ”
The storm off the Maine coastline that morning had sent scores of fishermen further south, toward Boston and the Cape. Bales and Cannon decided, “by a mere stroke of divine providence,” Cannon told ABC News, to head into Boston Harbor, dock for the day, then head back out after the storm broke. They came upon The Grand Pause, called it in, then decided, after seeing Dawn struggling to keep her head above water, to make the rescue attempt themselves. There was blood all around Dawn, swirling in salty swells, attracting all sorts of predators. Blue fish, they knew, were more of a threat in Cape Cod Bay than sharks. They needed to act quickly.
Dawn had started cutting through her legs, couldn’t go through with it, and decided to give in to death.
Cannon used the net hoist on their fishing rig to keep The Grand Pause afloat while Bales went in with a torch and cut through the handcuffs.
“If I can follow up,” Dickie said, feedback from the microphone squealing throughout the hall. “As I hand these two men our most coveted honor, by leaving you all with something Jake once told me.” After a few inaudible shouts, the audience quieted. “Jake asked me one day if I knew what concupiscence was. I looked at him as though he was speaking Chinese or something.” Some in the crowd laughed. “ ‘It’s the magnetic pull of evil,’ he explained. ‘It’s that devil on your shoulder—the desire to sin that is in every one of us.’ I made some stupid joke that day and … oh, well, you don’t need to hear it, too. My point is. These two men standing here prove that there is also the pull of goodness in many of us. They heard that call and answered. Thank you for hearing me out.”
Standing ovation.
95
Monday, October 16 – 12:16 P.M.
Jake parked his Chevelle in the only space available near the Cumberland Farms convenience store outside Logan Airport in Chelsea. It felt good to be back in the saddle, the smell of the city wafting up around him. For a city boy, nothing compared to good old-fashioned taxi exhaust choking your sinuses after a few weeks in the country.
He walked up a grassy knoll incline strewn with garbage off to the side of the road. When he reached the summit, he turned and took in what was the best view of Orient Heights, East Boston, the highest point in the city. Jake liked it here. Save for the roar of the jets taking off from Logan, the atmosphere comforted him. He loved looking out at the well-settled, hardworking community of blue-collar Bostonians and the backdrop of downtown’s saw-toothed skyline.
Home.
Fifty yards ahead, Jake stood on the concrete patio inside the Madonna Queen Shrine. Off in the distance, he spied the man he had come to see.
“Thought I might find you here. Always was your favorite place in the city to say a rosary.”
Father John turned. Walked slow. Jake could tell it was not by choice or from old age. The man was in pain. This, after several weeks of healing.
“Nice to see you, Jake.” The tranquility in the priest’s voice was familiar.
On the street down below, a car honked. A man yelled something in Spanish to his wife, who leaned out of one of the three-decker windows. The squeal of a city bus’s brakes squelched them both out.
“Thought we might have lost you there, Father.” Jake hadn’t seen Father John since he was air-lifted with a punctured lung from the Museum of Science that afternoon. The Boston diocese sent Father John to one of its hospitals in Canada specializing in heart and lung surgery. The knife entered his chest cavity, just missing his aorta. Rupturing a main vessel, however, the priest had endured two heart attacks in the weeks following the incident and needed an operation to get him back
on his feet.
“Never, Jake.” They hugged. The priest stepped back for a minute and stared at the cop. “Let me just look at you.”
Sea gulls from a nearby landfill squawked their whiney cries overhead.
“Glad you’re on the mend, Father. Nice to see you up and around. Sorry I didn’t make a visit.”
“No need to apologize. You had your hands full with Dawn, Jake. How is she?”
“She’ll be okay. The wounds went deep. Strong girl. Never thought she had it in her to even consider the idea. She’s ansty to get back to work.”
Father John squeezed his rosary, looked up into the sky. “Thank God above.”
“Father, without your instinct—”
“No, no, no.”
They walked, taking in the shrine, its piety, the unspoken sacredness between them while standing in such a divine place.
“The papers get it right, Jake? I never heard how.”
Jake dropped his head. Stared at the Virgin Mary before him. “Yeah.” Then, looking down at the concrete, fiddling with his sunglasses, he had no idea why, but Jake Sundance Cooper lied to his priest. “He came at me and I shot him. That’s about it.” He had written the same thing in his report.
“You taking some more time off, or …?”
This was the burning question. Jake wasn’t sure himself. “Being a cop, Father, it’s like you’re in the mob. Once you’re in, you’re in. There’s very little faith left in justice. Besides, I am thinking about taking my investigative skills and putting them together with my writing skills and taking on a new career.”
“We have Dennis LeHane and Robert Parker already, Jake.”
“Yeah, I wasn’t quite thinking along those lines.” Jake smiled.
“Well,” Father John said, unsure if Jake was joking, grabbing him by the shoulder and squeezing, “regardless what you do, I need to remind you that faith is a funny thing, isn’t it? We all have faith in something.” They looked up at the immense statue of the Madonna Queen. “The belief of Don Orione here, the great man who erected this fine structure, was that beside every work of charity lies a work of faith.”
Jake nodded.
“Abide with me, Jake,” Father John concluded. “There is hope for the hopeless.”
Enjoy These Nonfiction Titles by M. William Phelps
Perfect Poison
Lethal Guardian
Every Move You Make
Sleep in Heavenly Peace
Murder in the Heartland
Because You Loved Me
If Looks Could Kill
I’ll Be Watching You
Deadly Secrets
Cruel Death
Death Trap
Failures of the Presidents (co-author)
Nathan Hale: The Life and Death of America’s First Spy
The Devil’s Rooming House: The True Story of America’s Deadliest Female Serial Killer
Kill For Me
Love Her to Death
Too Young to Kill
Never See Them Again
Kiss of the She-Devil
The Devil’s Right Hand
About the Author
Serial killer, crime expert and investigative journalist M. William Phelps spent ten years driving in, out and around metro Boston as a courier, where he met lots of cops and criminals, and discovered how the underbelly of Bean Town works. Since those days, Phelps has become the award-winning author of 20 nonfiction books. Winner of the 2008 New England Book Festival Award for I’ll Be Watching You, has appeared on Court TV, The Discovery Channel, Fox News Channel, CN8, CBS’ “Early Show,” ABC’s “Good Morning America,” The Learning Channel, Biography Channel, History Channel, Montel Williams, Investigative Discovery, Geraldo At Large, USA Radio Network, Catholic Radio, ABC News Radio and Radio America. Profiled in such noted publications as Writer's Digest, NY Daily News, Newsday, Albany Times-Union, Hartford Courant and NY Post, Phelps has also consulted for the Showtime cable television series “Dexter.” In 2012, a weekly series Phelps created and stars in, “Dark Minds,” premiered on Investigation Discovery. The show focuses on a fundamental obsession Phelps has with hunting (and catching) serial killers.
Phelps, whose sister-in-law, five months pregnant, was murdered in 1996, lives in a small Connecticut farming community near the Massachusetts border. A member of the Mystery Writers of America and International Thriller Writers, he can be reached at his author website, www.mwilliamphelps.com
THE DEAD SOUL: A Thriller Page 35