Providence Rag: A Liam Mulligan Novel (12 page)

“So, Gloria,” he said, “what brings you out on this godforsaken afternoon?”

“I needed to talk to you, but I never saw you come in today. I thought I might find you here.”

“I was out working on something.”

“What?”

“A follow on Kessler.”

“Are they going to find a way to keep him in prison?”

“Doesn’t look like it.” He swigged from his longneck and asked, “So what’s on your mind?”

“Mason,” she said.

“What about him?”

“Did you hear what he’s working on?”

“He told me.”

“What the hell is he thinking?”

“He’s thinking that a whole bunch of our public servants have been conspiring to break the law.”

“If he can prove it, will they have to let Diggs out, too?”

“Probably.”

She squeezed her eyes shut.

“Jesus.”

“Don’t worry about it, Gloria. Mason’s not that good.”

“He may be better than you think. He learned a lot working with you on that pornography investigation.”

“Um.”

“Can’t you talk him out of this?”

“I tried. Lomax tried, too.”

Gloria picked up her beer and took a long swallow.

“We’ve got to do something,” she said.

“I already have.”

“What?”

“Mason asked me to help him.”

“And?”

“And he thinks that I am.”

Gloria smiled at that.

“What did you do?”

“I suggested he go through all the transcripts of Diggs’s trials, find the names of the witnesses who testified about the drug charge and the prison assaults, and interview them.”

“Ha! When he talks to them, they aren’t going to tell him anything, are they?”

“They’ll swear that their lies were the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

“So help them God,” Gloria said.

“You bet.”

“That should slow him down,” she said, “but it probably won’t stop him.”

“Maybe he’ll get discouraged and give up.”

“Does he strike you as the kind who gives up?”

“No,” Mulligan said.

Gloria shook her head, then pushed damp strands of hair back from her good eye.

“We’ve got to make sure Diggs doesn’t get out,” she said.

“We?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re a
photographer,
Gloria.”

“I’m a
journalist.
Mostly I use a camera; but I know how to ask questions, and I know how to take notes.”

Mulligan gave her a searching look.

“Don’t take this wrong,” he said, “but after what you’ve been through, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to get involved in this.”

“It’s because of what I’ve been through that I
have
to get involved in this.”

Mulligan puffed on his cigar, drained his beer, and asked Annie for another.

“Okay, Gloria,” he said. “What do you have in mind?”

February 2000

The worst thing is the boredom, every day the same as the last.

Wake up at seven
A.M
. Three tasteless meals a day shoved through the bars. A half hour of exercise in the yard every afternoon. Lights out at ten
P.M.
The asshole in the next cell howling the same off-key Motown song, “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone,” for what seems like an hour every night. The Mob hit man three cells down screaming at him to shut the fuck up.

It’s so bad that he actually looks forward to the weekly visits from his mother, even though the only thing she ever talks about is Jesus.

He pulls the thin blanket up to his chin, rolls over to face the cinder-block wall, and closes his eyes. Tonight, he chooses
A Nightmare on Elm Street,
the opening scene playing on the inside of his eyelids.

But in his version, Freddy Krueger isn’t the one flashing the knife-bladed finger-glove. In his version, all of his victims are blondes.

19

April 2012

It had taken three weeks for the Superior Court clerk to print out all the trial transcripts, nearly eight thousand pages counting legal briefs. No way Lomax was going to approve the seven-hundred-and-eighty-five-dollar processing fee. Even if he’d agreed with what Mason was doing, he’d have trouble squeezing the payment out of the dwindling newsroom budget. Mason didn’t even ask. He just shelled out the money himself.

He began by reading the transcripts of the two murder trials. The physical evidence tying Diggs to the killings was overwhelming, but Mason found it curious that the prosecution had never established a motive. Then he quickly read through Diggs’s contempt, drug, and assault cases. His first run through all the documents consumed the best part of a week.

Setting aside the murder cases, he combed through the other four transcripts again, underlining key points and jotting down the names of every judge, lawyer, and witness. He saw right off that there was no point in interviewing them. At least not yet. Not until he came up with something to challenge their stories.

Come on, Mulligan, Mason said to himself, did you really think I’d fall for that? But there had to be somebody out there who would tell him the truth.

Mason dropped the transcripts in his file drawer, locked it, pulled his iPhone from his jacket pocket, and called the new source he was developing. A guy who moonlighted at an automobile dealership to supplement his meager wages as a clerk for the State Department of Corrections.

“Bristol Toyota. How may we serve you?”

“Don Sockol, please.”

“May I tell him who is calling?”

“Edward Mason.”

“One moment, please.…”

“Hi, Edward! How are you enjoying the Prius?”

“I love it,” Mason lied.

“So how can I help you today?”

“I was hoping you could do me a favor.”

“Anything for a great customer.”

“I’d like to get a list of the guards who worked at the Department of Corrections between 1994 and 2011.”

“Oh, jeez. That would be a lot of people. Can you narrow it down any?”

“I’m looking for guards who would have had contact with Kwame Diggs.”

“Okay, then. That would be guys who worked Supermax. Probably still be a few hundred names, though. We have a lot of turnover.”

“That’s fine.”

“So you’re workin’ on a story about Diggs, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“Great. I’m happy to do anything that will help keep that crazy sonovabitch locked up.”

Mason thought it best not to straighten him out.

“Just keep my name out of it, okay?” Sockol said. “I don’t want to get in any trouble.”

“I will. You have my word.”

20

Mulligan and Gloria circled the statehouse in Secretariat, his pet name for his battered old Ford Bronco. All of the parking spaces, even the illegal ones, were taken, so they shelled out a few bucks to park in the garage at the Providence Place Mall and walked up the hill to the noon rally.

The forecast was for rain, but that hadn’t discouraged the turnout. Thousands had gathered on the long slope of the statehouse lawn, ringed by dozens of uniformed state cops and a squadron of mounted Providence police. Most of the crowd was in shirtsleeves, thanks to global warming. The ninety-eight-degree temperature was an all-time Providence record for April.

As they passed through the crowd, Gloria snapped photos of people waving hand-lettered signs:

Justice for Brian Freeman.

What Are You Thinking?

And dozens bearing an old photo of Eric Kessler and a single word:
Monster.

Gloria spotted a little boy, no more than six, standing beside his parents. He held a sign containing a photo of Brian Freeman and a message he’d apparently written himself:

This Could of Bin Me.

“That one,” Gloria said, “will end up on page one.”

Monsignor Ignatius Buffone stood at a lectern that had been placed at the top of the statehouse steps, raised his hand for silence, and spoke into the microphone.

“Dear Lord, bless the Freeman family and all of the good people of Rhode Island who have gathered here on this day. We pray that you will give our public servants the wisdom to protect us from those who would do evil to our children. And Lord, please stay your rain just a little while longer. Blessed be God in his angels and in his saints.”

Then Providence’s hottest radio host, Iggy Rock, stepped forward, adjusted the microphone, and shouted, “Good morning, Row Dyelin!”

Iggy’s birth name, Mulligan knew, was Armen Bardakjian. He’d grown up in the Providence neighborhood of Fox Point; flunked out of Rhode Island College, which was no easy thing to do; washed out as a Yugo salesman, Dunkin’ Donuts store manager, and Amway distributor; and failed to make the grade as a wife beater. After he slapped his wife for the third time, she drove him to the emergency room to get his bruised testicles and broken nose treated.

Now, as Iggy Rock, he had reinvented himself as a right-wing radio howler, his shtick a cross between Laura Ingraham–style moralizing and Rush Limbaugh–style liberal bashing. At first, he had called himself Igneous Rock, but he’d recently shortened it to Iggy after realizing few of his listeners knew what igneous meant.

“Thank you all for answering my call to gather here today,” Iggy was saying. “Look at the size of this crowd. This is democracy in action. Your voices
will
be heard!”

He thrust both hands in the air as if signaling a touchdown, and the crowd erupted with cheers and applause.

“I am honored to be your host for these proceedings,” he said. “Without further ado, I want to introduce a true Row Dyelin hero, Chief Vincent Matea of the Hopkinton Police Department.”

Matea, looking stiff in his dress police uniform, stepped forward, removed his cap, and placed it on the lectern.

“Thank you, Iggy,” he said, “but I’m no hero. I’m just a country policeman who tries to do an honest job.”

That drew a smattering of appreciative applause.

“Back in 1982, when I was a sergeant, I arrested Eric Kessler for the murder of Brian Freeman.”

The crowd roared its approval.

“In the years since,” Matea continued, “I have been the custodian of Kessler’s private journal. It depicts his bizarre fantasy world and graphically describes the unspeakable things he did to that innocent little boy. It still gives me nightmares, but this is a burden I must bear alone. A court order and simple human decency prevent me from sharing its contents with you.

“What I can tell you with certainty,” he continued, “is that Eric Kessler does not deserve his freedom. If it were up to me, he would remain in a prison cell until he rots. That’s all I am prepared to say, so let me introduce you to the man you have come here to see: Brian’s courageous father, Mr. Gordon Freeman.”

The crowd clapped politely as the tall, gaunt man stepped to the microphone. Iggy rushed to his side, grabbed his hand, and thrust it in the air.

“Let’s have a huge Little Rhody welcome for Mr. Freeman!”

The applause swelled.

“I can’t
hear
you!” Iggy shouted.

The crowd responded with a roar.

Before it subsided, Freeman began to weep.

“Thank you for coming,” he said, his deep voice trembling. He sounded like a man who had gone one day without drinking and now wished he hadn’t. “Thank you all for remembering Brian. My son was a beautiful little boy, and Eric Kessler took him from me. It is unthinkable that this monster would ever be set free, but the unthinkable is about to happen.”

He paused, swiped the tears away with his palm, and continued, his voice stronger now.

“Nothing will ever bring my boy back, but I promise that this madman will never enjoy a single day of freedom. If Eric Kessler gets out of prison, I’m going to kill him.”

That sounded like an applause line to Mulligan, but it stunned the crowed into silence.

“Still,” Freeman said, “I’d rather not get locked up myself. So I have come here to ask, to
demand,
that the folks with the power to stop this do the right thing. They say the law requires that Kessler be released. I say there is a higher law that says he must not be.”

This time, the applause line did its job.

“Attorney General Roberts is here with us this morning,” Freeman said. “I’d like him to come to the microphone now and tell us what he’s going to do about this.”

The crowd booed and hooted as the patrician, silver-haired politician, who had first come to public attention as the lead prosecutor at Kwame Diggs’s murder trials, stepped to the lectern.

Iggy elbowed him aside and shouted, “What? I still can’t
hear
you. Show him how you really feel.”

Visibly irritated, Roberts stiff-armed Iggy away from the microphone.

“Two days ago,” Roberts said, “Eric Kessler was observed flushing paper towels down the toilet in his cell. That is a violation of prison rules. For this offense, corrections officials were able to shave thirty days from the good time he earned during his years of incarceration. This fortunate turn of events has provided us with additional time to find a resolution to our dilemma.”

That provoked angry shouts.

“That’s
it
?”

“That’s all you’ve got?”

“Impeach Roberts!”

The crowed took up the chant: “Impeach Roberts! Impeach Roberts!” The attorney general’s expression never changed. He waited for the chants to subside before continuing.

“We are attempting to persuade Mr. Kessler that it would be in his best interest to agree to voluntary commitment in a secure psychiatric hospital upon his release.”

That provoked a scattering of applause.

“If he refuses, we could ask a judge to order his involuntary commitment,” Roberts said. “However, I don’t want to mislead you. As a rule, the courts are very reluctant to issue such orders.”

With that, the crowd howled in protest. Roberts shrugged and stepped back. Iggy took his place at the microphone and led the crowd in the chant: “Impeach Roberts! Impeach Roberts! Impeach Roberts!”