Darkness, Take My Hand (13 page)

“So he did it.”

Gerry shrugged. “Every year, because his father asked me to, I visit Alec at Walpole. And, maybe, I dunno, because I like him. I still see the little kid in him. Whatever. But as much as I like him, he’s a cipher. Is he capable of murder? Yeah. I don’t doubt that for a second. But I can also tell you that no single man, no matter how strong—and Alec wasn’t all that strong—could have done what was done to Rugglestone.” He pursed his lips and downed the shot. “But as soon as Alec went to trial, the killings I’d been investigating dried up. His father, of course, retired not long after the arrest, but I kept looking into the
Morrison murder and the six that came before it, and I cleared Alec of involvement in at least two of those.”

“But he was convicted.”

“For Rugglestone’s murder only. Nobody wanted to admit that they’d suspected a serial killer was out there and didn’t notify the general public. No one wanted more egg on their faces after the son of a decorated cop was arrested for a brutal murder. So Alec went to trial for Rugglestone’s murder and he was sentenced to life in prison and he’s up at Walpole rotting away. His father went to Florida, probably died trying to figure out where it all went so wrong. And none of this would matter, I suppose, except that someone crucified Kara Rider on a hill and someone else gave you my name and the name Alec Hardiman.”

“So,” I said, “if there actually was more than one killer, and Alec Hardiman was one of them…”

“Then the other one’s still out there, yeah.” Dark pockets had formed under his eyes and hollowed them out. “And if he’s still out there after almost twenty-something years, and he’s been holding his breath all this time for some sort of comeback, I’d say he’s probably pretty pissed off.”

It was snowing
on a bright summer day when Kara Rider stopped me to ask how the Jason Warren case was going.

She’d changed her hair back to its original blond and she was sitting in a lawn chair outside The Black Emerald wearing only a pink bikini bottom and the snow fell to either side of her and piled up by the chair, but only sun fell on her skin. Her small breasts were hard, and beaded with perspiration, and I had to keep reminding myself that I’d known her since she was a little kid, and I shouldn’t be noticing them in a sexual context.

Grace and Mae were half a block up, Grace placing a black rose in Mae’s hair. Across the avenue a pack of white dogs, small and gnarled like fists, watched them and drooled, thick streams pouring from the sides of their mouths.

“I got to go,” I said to Kara, but when I looked back, Grace and Mae were gone.

“Sit,” Kara said. “Just for a sec.”

So I sat and the snow fell down the back of my collar and chilled my spine. My teeth chattered as I said, “I thought you were dead.”

“No,” she said. “I just went away for a while.”

“Where’d you go?”

“Brookline. Shit.”

“What?”

“This place looks just the fucking same.”

Grace stuck her head out of The Black Emerald. “You ready, Patrick?”

“Got to go,” I said and patted Kara’s shoulder.

She took my hand and laid it against her bare breast.

I looked at Grace, but she didn’t seem to mind. Angie stood beside her and they both smiled.

Kara stroked her nipple with my palm. “Don’t forget about me.”

Snow was pouring on her body now, burying it.

“I won’t. I gotta go.”

“Bye.”

The legs of her lawn chair collapsed under the weight of the snow, and when I looked back I could just make out her form under drifts of soft white.

Mae came out of the bar and took my hand and fed it to her dog.

I watched my blood foam in the dog’s mouth, and it didn’t hurt—it was almost sweet.

“See,” Mae said, “he likes you, Patrick.”

The last week of October, we bailed out of the Jason Warren case by mutual agreement with Diandra and Eric. I know guys who would’ve milked it, played up to the fears of a worried mother, but I don’t milk cases. Not because I’m particularly moral, but because it’s bad business when half your living comes from repeat clients. We had files on all of Jason’s teachers since he’d come to Bryce (eleven) and all his known acquaintances (Jade, Gabrielle, Lauren, and his roommate) except the guy with the goatee, and nothing about any of them suggested they were a threat to Jason. We had write-ups of our daily observation work, as well as synopses of our meeting with Fat Freddy, Jack Rouse, and Kevin Hurlihy, and my own telephone discussion with Stan Timpson.

Diandra had received no more threats, phone calls, or pictures in the mail. She’d spoken with Jason in New Hampshire, mentioned that a friend of hers had seen him with a guy in the Sunset Grill the previous week, and Jason had described him as “just a friend” and offered no more information.

We spent another week tailing him, and it was more of the same—explosions of sexual activity, solitude, studying.

Diandra agreed that we were all getting nowhere, that there was nothing outside of her having received that photograph to suggest Jason was in any danger whatsoever, and we finally came to the conclusion that maybe our original perception—that Diandra had inadvertently angered Kevin Hurlihy—had been correct after all. Once we’d met with Fat Freddy, every hint of threat had disappeared; maybe Freddy, Kevin, Jack and the whole mob had decided to back off, but hadn’t wished to lose face to a couple of PIs.

Whatever the situation, it was over now, and Diandra paid us for our time and thanked us, and we left our cards and home numbers in case anything sprang back up and went back to our lives during our business’s dullest season.

A few days later, at his behest, we met Devin in The Black Emerald at two o’clock in the afternoon. There was a “Closed” sign in the doorway, but we knocked and Devin opened the door, locked it behind us after we came in.

Gerry Glynn was behind the bar, sitting on the cooler, not looking very happy, and Oscar sat by a plate of food at the bar, and Devin took his seat beside him and bit into the bloodiest cheeseburger this side of an open flame.

I took the seat beside Devin, and Angie took the one beside Oscar and stole one of his fries.

I looked at Devin’s cheeseburger. “They just lean the cow against a radiator?”

He growled and stuffed some more in his mouth.

“Devin, you know what red meat does to your heart, never mind your bowels?”

He wiped his mouth with a cocktail napkin. “You turn into one of those holistic, health PC douchebags while I wasn’t looking, Kenzie?”

“Nope. But I saw one picketing out front.”

He reached for his hip. “Here. Take my gun and shoot the prick. See if you can pop a mime while you’re at it. I’ll see it gets written up right.”

A throat cleared behind me and I looked into the bar mirror. A man sat in a shadowed booth just over my right shoulder.

He wore a dark suit and dark tie, a crisp white shirt and a matching scarf. His dark hair was the color of polished mahogany. He sat stiffly in the booth, as if his spine had been replaced with pipe.

Devin jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Patrick Kenzie, Angela Gennaro, meet FBI Special Agent Barton Bolton.”

I turned on my barstool and Angie turned on hers and we both said, “Hi.”

Special Agent Barton Bolton said nothing. He looked each of us up and down like a concentration camp commandant trying to decide if we were best fit for work or extermination, then shifted his gaze to a point somewhere over Oscar’s shoulder.

“We have a problem,” Oscar said.

“Could be a small problem,” Devin said, “could be a big one.”

“And it is?” Angie said.

“Let’s all sit together.” Oscar pushed his plate away.

Devin did the same and we all joined Special Agent Barton Bolton in the booth.

“What about Gerry?” I said, watching him clear the plates off the bar.

“Mr. Glynn’s already been questioned,” Bolton said.

“Ah.”

“Patrick,” Devin said, “your card was found in Kara Rider’s hand.”

“I told you how it got there.”

“And when we were working on the presumption that Micky Doog or one of his puke friends had killed her because she wouldn’t blow him or whatever, it wasn’t a problem.”

“Your presumption has changed?” Angie said.

“’Fraid so.” Devin lit a cigarette.

“You quit,” I said.

“Unsuccessfully.” He shrugged.

Agent Bolton removed a photograph from his briefcase,
handed it to me. It was of a young man, mid-thirties, built like a Grecian statue. He wore only shorts and was smiling at the camera and his upper torso was all hard cuts and coiled muscle, biceps the size of baseballs.

“Do you know this man?”

I said, “No,” and handed the photo to Angie.

She looked at it a moment. “No.”

“You’re sure?”

Angie said, “I’d remember that body. Trust me.”

“Who is he?”

“Peter Stimovich,” Oscar said. “Actually his full name is The Late Peter Stimovich. He was killed last night.”

“Did he have my business card too?”

“Not as far as we know.”

“Then why am I here?”

Devin looked across the bar at Gerry. “What did you and Gerry talk about when you came in here a few days ago?”

“Ask Gerry.”

“We did.”

“Wait,” I said, “how do you know I came in here a few days ago?”

“You’ve been under surveillance,” Bolton said.

“Excuse me?”

Devin shrugged. “This is bigger than you, Patrick. A lot bigger.”

“How long?” I said.

“How long what?”

“Have I been watched?” I looked at Bolton.

“Since Alec Hardiman refused our request to speak with him,” Devin said.

“So?”

“When he refused our request,” Oscar said, “he did it by saying you’re the only one he’ll talk to.”

“Me?”

“You, Patrick. Only you.”

“Why’s Alec Hardiman
want to talk to me?”

“Good question,” Bolton said. He waved at the smoke coming from Devin’s cigarette. “Mr. Kenzie, everything said from this point on is absolutely confidential. Understood?”

Angie and I gave Bolton our best shrugs.

“Just so we’re clear—if you repeat anything we speak of today, you’ll be charged with Federal obstruction charges carrying a maximum penalty of ten years.”

“You enjoy saying that, don’t you?” Angie said.

“What’s that?”

She deepened her voice. “’Federal obstruction charges.’”

He sighed. “Mr. Kenzie, when Kara Rider was murdered, she had your card in her hand. Her crucifixion, as you probably know, bore remarkable similarities to the crucifixion of a boy in this neighborhood in 1974. Sergeant Amronklin, you might not know, was a patrolman back then who worked with former Detective Sergeant Glynn and Inspector Hardiman.”

I looked at Devin. “Did you think Kara’s murder might have been connected to Cal’s the night we saw her body?”

“I considered the possibility.”

“But you didn’t say anything to me.”

“Nope.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “You’re a private citizen, Patrick. It’s not my job to let you in. Besides, I thought it was a hell of a long shot. Just something I kept in the back of my mind.”

The phone on the bar rang and Gerry picked it up, his eyes on us. “Black Emerald.” He nodded as if he’d expected the caller’s question. “Sorry, no. We’re all closed up here. Plumbing problem.” He closed his eyes for a moment, nodded hurriedly. “You’re so desperate for a drink, try another bar. You better get going.” He looked about to hang up. “What’d I tell you? Closed. I’m sorry, too.”

He hung up, gave us a shrug.

“This other victim,” I said.

“Stimovich.”

“Right. Was he crucified?”

“No,” Bolton said.

“How’d he die?”

Bolton looked at Devin and Devin looked at Oscar and Oscar said, “Who gives a shit? Tell them. We need all the help we can get before we have more bodies on our hands.”

Bolton said, “Mr. Stimovich was tied to a wall, his skin removed in strips, and then he was disembowled while he was still alive.”

“Jesus,” Angie said and blessed herself so quickly I’m not even sure she was aware she did it.

Gerry’s phone rang again.

Bolton frowned. “Can you yank that out of the hook for a little while, Mr. Glynn?”

Gerry looked pained. “Agent Bolton, with all due respect to the dead, I’ll keep my place closed as long as you feel you need it, but I got regulars wondering why my door’s closed.”

Bolton waived dismissively and Gerry answered the phone.

After a few seconds of listening, he nodded. “Bob, Bob, listen, we have a plumbing situation. I’m sorry, but I got three inches of water on the floor and…” He listened. “So do what I’m telling you—go to Leary’s or The Fermanagh. Go
somewhere
. Okay?”

He hung up, gave us another shrug.

I said, “How do you know Kara wasn’t killed by someone she knew? Micky Doog? Or a gang initiation rite?”

Oscar shook his head. “It doesn’t play that way. All her known acquaintances have alibis, including Micky Doog. Plus there’s a whole lot of her time unaccounted for while she was back in the city.”

“She wasn’t hanging around the neighborhood much,” Devin said. “Her mother had no idea where she went. But she was back in town only three weeks and it wasn’t like she could have made that many acquaintances over in Brookline.”

“Brookline?” I said, remembering my dream.

“Brookline. That’s the one place we know she went several times. Credit card receipts from Cityside, a couple of restaurants around Bryce University.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“What?”

“Nothing. Nothing. Look, how do you know these cases are connected if the vics were killed in different ways?”

“Photographs,” Bolton said.

A block of dry ice melted in my chest.

“What photographs?” Angie said.

Devin said, “Kara’s mother had a stack of mail she hadn’t opened in a few days before Kara died. One of them was an envelope, no return address, no note, just a photograph of Kara inside, innocent photo, nothing—”

Angie said, “Gerry, can I use your phone?”

“What’s the matter?” Bolton said.

She was already at the bar, dialing.

“And the other guy, Stimovich?” I said.

“No one at his dorm room,” Angie said and hung up, dialed another number.

“What’s up, Patrick?” Devin said.

“Tell me about Stimovich,” I said, trying to keep the panic from my voice. “Devin. Now.”

“Stimovich’s girlfriend, Alice Boorstin—”

“No one at Diandra’s office,” Angie said and slammed the phone down, picked it up, began dialing again.

“—received a similar photo of him in the mail two weeks ago. Same thing. No note or return address, just a photo.”

“Diandra,” Angie said into the phone, “where’s Jason?”

“Patrick,” Oscar said, “tell us.”

“I
have
his class schedule,” Angie said. “He only has one class today and it was over five hours ago.”

“Our client received a similar photograph weeks ago,” I said. “Of her son.”

“We’ll be in touch. Stay there. Don’t worry.” Angie hung up the phone. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she said.

“Let’s go.” I stood up.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Bolton said.

“Arrest me,” I said and followed Angie out the door.