The Dead Room (16 page)

33

Jamie opened a drawer in Dan’s desk and took out Ben Masters’s passport and licence. She clutched the items as she ran back upstairs to the living room.

She opened the passport and held the photograph up against the TV screen, next to the picture of an older Frank Sullivan.

Ben had smaller nostrils but his nose was the same long, angular shape as Frank Sullivan’s. Both faces were oblong. Same high forehead. And both men had square jaws and cleft chins.

Differences: Ben’s rooster neck was gone. The skin on his face was tight and smooth, not a wrinkle anywhere. He had a full head of black hair.

Dyed
, she thought.
He must have had the hair transplanted, or maybe it’s a wig or a
–

Do you realize what you’re saying?
that inner voice asked.

Yes, she did.

Frank Sullivan was Ben Masters. There was no question in her mind.

She had encountered a handful of men in Wellesley – successful big-time executives who had undergone minimally invasive nips and tucks that, after a week of healing, left them looking relaxed and refreshed, as though they had taken a long vacation. These middle-aged men were struggling to maintain their youth. Nothing terrified a man more than losing his sex appeal to younger women, who, when you got right down to it, weren’t paying attention to them anyway.

To complete his transformation to Ben Masters, Frank Sullivan had undergone a complete craniofacial reconstruction. He’d got himself a new head of hair but hadn’t tucked his ears or done anything to hide the dimple on his chin. Maybe no one would recognize Frank Sullivan passing by in the street, but if you put these two photographs side by side anyone could see the similarities.

Do you still think this is goddamn coincidence?
she asked that nagging inner voice.

It didn’t answer.

Fact: Frank Sullivan is Ben Masters.

Fact: Ben Masters is Frank Sullivan.

Fact: Frank Sullivan and Ben Masters are the same person.

Jamie grabbed the remote and pressed
PLAY
.

She had to wade through five more minutes of commentary and then came the segment of Frank Sullivan’s death during an FBI raid in the summer of 1983. Two of Frank’s associates had died, along with four FBI undercover agents who’d been placed on the boat – Jack King, Peter Alan, Steve White and Anthony Frissora.

The men’s four pictures came on the TV. Jamie hit PAUSE.

Peter Alan… He bore a close resemblance to the man she’d shot in the basement – and Kevin Reynolds had called him Peter. She couldn’t be entirely sure, though. And Anthony Frissora, why did he seem so familiar?

The man I shot at the Belham house… I swear that’s Anthony Frissora.

That inner voice perked up again:
So now you’re saying that, in addition to killing one dead man who went by the name of Francis Sullivan, you’re saying that you killed two more dead men – two dead Federal agents by the names of Peter Alan and Anthony Frissora.

There was no doubt in her mind that Ben Masters was Frank Sullivan, but Peter Alan and Anthony Frissora… the pictures on the TV screen were at least twenty years old, but their faces… their faces
did
bear a close resemblance to the two men she’d shot.

She filed the thought away and hit
PLAY
.

Frank Sullivan’s badly charred body, the newsreader said, was buried next to his mother’s in a Charlestown cemetery.

Jamie wondered who was really buried in the cemetery, wondered how Frank Sullivan had managed to fake his death, and wondered how he had managed to get both the FBI and the Boston police to buy off on it. Her thoughts turned to the man she’d shot in the basement – the man she knew only as Peter.

I can tell you everything you need to know
, he’d told her.

He’d worn a gun in a shoulder holster underneath his suit jacket. And she remembered him saying how he had tried to visit the boy named Sean at the hospital and encountered a problem with some woman from the Boston PD.

Was the man named Peter a cop? Clearly he was tied in to Kevin Reynolds and Ben Masters.

Frank Sullivan was now Ben Masters. Kevin Reynolds had worked for Sullivan. Reynolds had said he was expecting a call from Ben.

Has to be Ben Masters
, she thought.

If the man named Peter was, in fact, some sort of law enforcement officer, had he helped Sullivan fake his death?

You’re forgetting that this Peter guy was working with other people – the man you shot inside the house, the ones who removed the body from the woods, the ones watching the house. One man couldn’t pull off faking someone’s death, but if he had a whole group of law enforcement people working together to pull it off…

Frank Sullivan died in the summer of 1983. He resurrected himself as Benjamin Masters. Five years ago he broke into her house and killed her husband.

Why had Sullivan/Ben come out of hiding?

What happened to your husband and children
, the man named Peter had told her,
I didn’t have anything to do with that. You have to believe me. That… that was all Kevin and Ben
.

She watched the news for another twenty minutes. There was no mention of a missing man named Ben Masters, but she was sure there would be plenty of discussion about it between Kevin Reynolds and his people.

Carter called out for her.

‘Mom! Mom, I’m getting cold!’

She shut off the TV and stood, trembling all over. She shoved the passport and licence into her pocket as she moved to the bottom of the stairs.

‘Get… ah… towel. Dry… ah… dry… off. Be… ah… ah… up… ah… in… ah… minute.’

‘Okay.’

Back in the basement, she took out Ben’s mobile phone and slipped in the battery. She turned it on knowing she had to do this quickly, knowing that the signal was being monitored by this group of men. She knew one of these men was named Jack. She remembered Peter saying something about a man named Jack watching the Belham house.

The phone’s screen had a message saying Ben had missed another eleven calls. She touched the message and the screen changed to the call log. Pontius had called. No calls from the man named Alan.

She found the box marked ‘Messaging’. She touched it. A new screen now appeared upon which she could compose a message. She started typing ‘Pontius’ when the phone automatically filled in the name.

She composed the message she’d been playing with for the past few hours:

MEET ME AT WATERMAN PARK IN BELHAM AT 5 A.M. COME ALONE. WE’VE BEEN SET UP. DON’T TALK TO ANYONE. GET RID OF PHONE SO THEY DON’T TRACK YOU. WILL EXPLAIN WHEN YOU GET THERE, THEN HAVE ARRANGED SAFE WAY FOR YOU TO LEAVE. CASH, NEW ID, PASSPORT & DRIVER TO TAKE US. BE CAREFUL. MAKE SURE THEY DON’T FOLLOW.

Throughout the afternoon she had debated the ‘come alone’ part; it reeked of a set-up. She wondered whether it would alert Reynolds. If he didn’t come alone, her plan wouldn’t work.

This is too risky
, that inner voice said.

Maybe, but this was the only way to bring Reynolds to her. She didn’t think he’d pass up an opportunity to speak to Ben Masters/Frank Sullivan. Reynolds, with his repeated phones calls, was clearly in a state of panic about what the police had found in his basement. And now here came Ben to the rescue. She felt confident Reynolds would follow the instructions in the message. When someone threw you a life preserver, you didn’t say wait, excuse me, but I need you to answer some additional questions before I grab hold. You clutched it and thanked the sweet Lord above for your tremendous good fortune.

What if something happens to you? Michael and Carter have already lost one parent. Don’t take away another.

Jamie saw the photograph Dan had taped to the wall – the photograph of Carter, still a baby, sitting on Michael’s lap on a beach at Cape Cod, their last vacation together as a family. Her two boys smiled at her from the picture, looking healthy, happy. No scars on their bodies. No memories of their father being tortured to death in the kitchen. No dead room.

You can figure out another way. You don’t have to –

She hit
SEND
. The message lingered on the screen for a moment and then disappeared into cyberspace or wherever these things went. Jamie removed the battery, threw everything back inside the drawer and went upstairs to tend to her children.

34

Darby, who had just stripped out of her coveralls, paced the threadbare carpet in the empty bedroom at the top of the stairs waiting for Dr Howard Edgar to come back on the line. The state’s new forensic anthropologist had moved into his Quincy home less than a week ago and was now rummaging around the strange rooms still packed with boxes searching for a pen and paper.

She had borrowed a mobile phone from a patrolman and had gone upstairs to get away from the noise. Jennings had gathered his troops inside the kitchen and she could hear him speaking.

‘The lead we had on Kevin Reynolds? It turned out to be his cousin, which isn’t surprising, since the two of them look so much alike. We need to find him. Some of you grew up here. I did too, so I know what you’re thinking – the neighbourhood won’t talk to us. Code of silence and all that bullshit. Tell them the remains we found might belong to local girls. That’s your way in. Use that to get them to talk. Work your contacts. Call any retired flatfoot you know who walked these streets during the Sullivan regime. Any name you get will help us get closer to identifying these remains.’

White lights danced across the old bedroom walls. Darby looked out of the grimy bedroom window at the faces gathered below her.

The locals had pretty much packed it in for the night but the media seemed to have doubled in size. Reporters, cameramen and photographers stood shoulder to shoulder behind the sawhorses, every one of them anxiously staring at the front door. Word had leaked about the remains.

Edgar’s nasal voice came back on the line. ‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Dr McCormick. What’s the address?’

She gave it to him. ‘Do you know how to get to Charlestown?’

‘No, but it doesn’t matter. My wife purchased a portable GPS unit for my car, so even a directionally challenged person like myself will have no trouble finding the address. Now tell me what you found.’

‘Three sets of remains, one in a state of advanced decomposition. The other two are fully skeletonized. They appear female. You can forget using dental records to ID the remains. Their teeth were pulled out before they were buried. And the person or persons who did it also cut off their hands and feet. It’s a classic mob burial before the days of DNA.

‘I sifted through the dirt and didn’t find any metacarpal or carpal bones. When you examine the tibia, you’ll see grooves that I think are consistent with a circular saw.’

‘Hopefully we can ID them through some other means,’ Edgar said. ‘I’d hate to use mitochondrial DNA testing. It’s very time consuming, in addition to being expensive.’

Edgar was worried about the city’s bean counters. Not a good sign.

‘There may be more remains buried down here,’ she said. ‘I dug up only a small part of the dirt cellar. A good part of it is laid in concrete, so I’d like you to bring in your sonar equipment. You’ll also need some additional bodies to help move the furniture. The space is rather small, so I’d suggest no more than three or four people.’

‘Dr Carter left me a list of graduate students. I don’t have the list handy, so I’ll have to stop by my office first. I apologize: I’m not usually this disorganized.’

‘There’s no rush. You’ll be here for a while – probably a good part of the night.’
And so will I
, Darby added privately. She had called in additional forensic teams to help process the house.

‘Dr McCormick, unless there’s some urgency, I’d prefer to examine the remains
in situ
.’

‘I thought you might. I did a little digging around the bones to see if I could find any clothing or jewellery that might help us, but, other than that, everything is undisturbed.’

‘Thank you,’ Edgar said. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

Darby snapped her phone shut, wishing she could go home and take a long shower. Her damp clothes clung to her skin and she felt as grimy as this bedroom’s window. She glanced at her watch. Half past ten.

Flashbulbs started popping from the street. She could hear the rapid machine-gun
click-click-click
of dozens of cameras snapping pictures, like this was a goddamn paparazzi event, as the two male attendants from the medical examiner’s office, wearing masks and coveralls, walked down the front steps carrying a black body bag holding Peter Alan. Cameras were held in the air to capture and record the footage. Cameramen stood on the roofs of news vans and cars, on the pavement and front stoops, along with some of the neighbours. Across the street, on the corner, a woman wearing a pink tank top and matching short-shorts stood barefoot on the front stairs of a home talking to a burly, bald man.

That’s the driver of the brown van. He’s wearing the same light grey suit and brown trousers.

Without taking her eyes off him, Darby opened her phone and hit the programmed number for Coop’s mobile.

‘Where are you?’ she asked when he answered.

‘I’m in the basement.’

‘Go upstairs to the living room and look out of the window facing the street. I’ll explain when you get there.’

Baldy stood close to the woman, speaking near her ear. The woman’s arms were crossed over her chest and she stared down at her bare feet.

Darby glanced around the street. No sign of a brown van.
It’s probably parked on one of the side streets
.

‘Okay,’ Coop said, ‘I’m here.’

‘Look across the street to your right. See the woman with the tight pink shorts? Has the word “trouble” stitched across her ass?’

‘I see her.’

‘The guy standing to her right, the one that’s built like a beer keg? I saw him this morning in Belham – he was the one driving the van,’ Darby said. ‘I want you to keep an eye on him while I talk to Jennings.’