2 in the Hat (25 page)

She instantly went from good-buddy Andi to lawyer full of piss and vinegar, as his mother used to say. “What’s going on? Angel, is Connie in trouble?”

“Andi, you know I can’t talk about an investigation. I need to ask you some questions and I need your honest answers.”

She picked up on his formality and the seriousness of his tone. She knew enough about interviewing witnesses. She nodded.

“What happened between you two?”

“I can honestly say I don’t know. I thought things were going well. I knew from the beginning that he wasn’t interested in me for just one thing, if you know what I mean.”

Interesting, considering that she was quite a good-looking woman.

“Connie took an interest in my career. I wouldn’t be the lawyer I am without his help. He gave me my first trial, taught me how to work up a case and prep for trial. He was an amazing teacher. And a real gentleman. He never tried to do more than kiss me. He was affectionate, but he never forced the issue. Because of Rachel.”

He wanted to ask about her young daughter. Tell Andi how he wished he and Marcy and the twins could come over on the ferry, spend the day with Andi and Will on South Beach, drive over to Oak Bluffs and let the kids ride the old carousel and reach for that one brass ring.

“By the way, Rachel’s doing great. She loves the ocean, walking on the beach, collecting shells. Moving here was the best thing I could have done for both of us.”

He nodded, but it still seemed odd to him. Why didn’t their relationship, which ran its course over a period of almost a year, never move beyond the affectionate peck stage? “If everything was going so well, why’d you break up?”

She thought for a second. “I don’t know. Maybe it was the stress after Nick’s disappearance and Mitch’s suicide. At first, we helped each other out. It was hard to come to work without Nick and Mitch. Connie was almost in denial, trying to convince himself that Mitch couldn’t have been a killer. Then he started getting a little religious on me, talking about how he knew Mitch’s victims were in a better place.”

Alves had never known Connie to be religious. “How was he with Rachel?”

“Great. He tried not to act like a father toward her.” Angel must have had a look, because she quickly added, “That’s a good thing. The worst is a guy who tries to insinuate himself into a child’s life to get to the mother. Every single mother has dated plenty of those guys.”

That made sense. “When did things start to fall apart?”

“After law school, I focused my attention on studying for the bar exam. Connie and I talked on the phone, but only saw each other once a week, on the weekend. My plan was to wait until after the exam and then maybe….” She looked at him, almost shyly, and he was walloped by her—her looks, yes, but beyond that, her intensity. “Angel, I did love him. I didn’t want to make him wait too long.”

“You’re doing great, Andi. You’ve got to tell me anything you think might help me understand him. So you never …”

“No. I hope I’m not telling you more than you want to hear.”

“You know yourself, sometimes it’s the smallest detail that makes everything fall into place.”

She smiled. “Don’t worry, Angel, it doesn’t get any more graphic than that. After I took the bar exam, I started interning in the DA’s office again. Everything was good between Connie and me. I tried to get him to go away on a romantic weekend—a bed-and-breakfast in New Hampshire—one of those couples deals with the champagne and spa treatment. He kept finding excuses. Then I tried to get him alone for a romantic dinner at my condo—Rachel tucked away at my parents. He showed up. But he was expecting me
and
Rachel. When it dawned on him that we were alone, that I had ulterior motives, he kind of freaked out.”

Alves recognized that spark of alertness he felt every time an interview veered unexpectedly into pay dirt. “What did he do?”

“He said I shouldn’t have misled him. He said that once we have intercourse, it shifts the power of a relationship, upsets the balance. He said he was only thinking of Rachel, making it sound like I was a bad mother. He left my apartment and never came back. After that, we were never alone, not even at work. When the summer ended, I had to make money. I couldn’t intern anymore. I had sent out résumés to other prosecutors’ offices around the state. I was lucky to end up in Falmouth District Court. My parents own a house in Falmouth, so I stayed there. When the job opened up on the Island, Rachel and I moved out here.”

“It’s a nice life. Are you happy?”

“I am. Will is a wonderful guy. He’s a great father to Rachel.”

“That’s all that matters.”

“Angel, I’ve never figured Connie out. I don’t think he’s gay, and I’m not buying that line about him thinking of Rachel. If that were the case, he never would have walked out of her life that night. That’s what bothers me most. I’m a grown woman, and I’ve had my dealings with worthless men. But he can go to hell if he thinks I’m going to let him hurt my daughter.”

“Have you ever been over his house?” Alves asked.

“That’s another thing he was weird about. I dated him for a year and I never set foot in that house. He always had excuses, that he was plastering or painting, that the house was a mess, that he didn’t want me to see it until it was done.”

Angel could see that rehashing her relationship with Connie was upsetting
her. “Things don’t make a lot of sense right now, Andi. Soon as I know anything for sure, I’ll tell you what I can. Thanks for seeing me. If I think of anything else, can I call you?”

“Sure.” She smiled, a little worn and weary after their conversation. “And I know, you and I never had this conversation.”

“You’re a doll, Andi.” He stood and hugged her. “Give Rachel a kiss from me.”

E
arlier, Sleep had made the mistake of not following Darget from
his home in Hyde Park. Instead, Sleep had been watching the DA’s office in Government Center from across the street on one of the benches in front of the JFK Building.

He played a game while he was waiting. First he’d find a number—say, the number of pigeons that waddled past him in five minutes. With that number, he’d count the males—old and young—who walked by his bench. When he hit the right number, that one was his brother for the day.

Sleep was good at the game. He’d been playing it since he was a kid, sitting by himself at the attic window, watching the passersby on the sidewalk below. First he imagined a name—Gussy, Tony, Billy—and then a life for his new brother. Sometimes it was going to school—and a good one, like Boston University or Harvard even. Sometimes it was a great job and co-workers, a family waiting for him back on their family’s street. Little nieces and nephews Sleep could play with and babysit for.

He liked the game. It always calmed him down, made his mind stop jumping ahead to questions and back to bad times. And when the game didn’t work for him, he always had Brother Death. His almost-twin, separated when their father had to be ferried across the River Styx to the underworld. Sleep couldn’t go with his father. He’d never make it back to
the living. But Brother Death, he could wade back across the river if he wanted to.

Now Sleep was tired with the game. There had been no sign of Darget.

Yesterday, Newbury Street had been a debacle. Sleep didn’t know if Darget had recognized him on the street or not. If he did, that meant that Sleep wouldn’t be able to get close enough. In fact, he couldn’t use the van anymore. Darget had seen it and would recognize it immediately. So he had rented a minivan. An electric blue monstrosity with tinted windows and sliding doors on each side, the kind that the gang kids in the city used for their missions. What he needed to do now was a quick drive-by. Catch Darget off guard and it would be done. Make it look like a gang hit.

A little after nine o’clock, Darget finally showed up. Late, for him, and he didn’t look happy. Something was definitely wrong. The fact that Darget had talked to Natalie meant that Darget was on to him. After leaving Natalie’s store, the next logical move for Darget would have been to tell his detective friends what Natalie had said about him. If the detectives knew anything, Sleep would already be in custody. But they hadn’t come for him. Not yet. Which meant that Darget hadn’t told them anything. Yet. But why not?

F
iggs turned onto Townsend Street and pulled over, left the motor
running. The ID Unit had put a rush on the photos taken of the scene and the gun in Stutter Simpson’s mother’s car. They were ready by the time he finished talking with Grady at the barber shop. He placed the photos on his lap, resting them against the steering wheel as he examined each one. Big question: Where had Stutter’s car stopped? In one photo, he saw a hydrant, and behind that, the trunk of a tree. Figgs found the hydrant easily and pulled up to that spot.

Something was nagging at him. It was too convenient, that gun found under Stutter Simpson’s butt. A gun that Simpson had supposedly used months earlier. A gun that had been passed around from one street gang to the next, all over the city. Why would it end up back in Simpson’s possession? Simpson had to know the gun had a body on it. So why would he keep it with him? Especially when he knew the police were looking for him.

Figgs stepped out of the car, surveying the neighborhood. Which houses had the best vantage point to observe the stop, the foot pursuit, the arrest, the recovery of the gun? The houses on Hazelwood Street. Figgs knocked on a few doors, the houses closest to Townsend, but mostly nobody answered. Those that did hadn’t seen anything. He made his way across a small parking lot to the next group of houses when he
thought of something. There was someone he could talk to who lived in the neighborhood. Sort of. Figgs just hoped the man was “home.”

He walked across Townsend Street toward the Boston Latin Academy, one of Boston’s exam schools. When Figgs was a kid, it was called the Girls’ Latin and it was housed in Dorchester, not Roxbury. He turned right, heading toward Humboldt, then made his way through an empty park on a worn footpath that cut diagonally across the brown grass. He spotted the shopping cart, piled high with cans, at the other end of the park, near Humboldt.

“Hey, Figgsy,” the man called out as he got closer.

The man was lying underneath a tree at the edge of the park, bundled in layers of coats, despite the unseasonably warm weather. His face was aged with drug and alcohol abuse.

“Hey there, Leo. How you been?” Figgs said.

“Doin’ okay. What’s a big Homicide detective doin’ out here in the hood? Slummin’?”

“I’m looking into something. Leo. You didn’t happen to be out here last night?”

“Might’ve been.”

“You see a dude with a ’fro get pinched by a couple of cowboys?”

“More ’n a couple.”

“What’d you see?”

“Heard them buzzing up the street. Toyota smashes into the curb and the kid bails. Big guy and little guy chase him down. Heard one cap. Figured the brother was toast. Then they bring him back.”

“You heard gunshots?” Figgs turned back toward the street.

“One shot.”

That wiseass prosecutor forgot to mention anything about shots being fired. There was no mention of it in the 1.1 either. That’s because Simpson didn’t shoot at Greene and Ahearn—they shot at him. And missed. They wouldn’t mention anything about a police officer discharging his firearm in the official police report, a public record. Figgs would have to pull the form 26s to find out everything that had happened out here last night.

Figgs looked back toward Townsend Street. He remembered the telephone poles at the end of the street. He hit the speed dial on his BlackBerry. “Inchie, you at the House? Take a walk down to Operations for me. Tell them to pull all the footage the Shot Spotter might have picked up on the officer discharge last night near the corner of Warren and
Townsend. I’ll be there soon.” Figgs clipped the phone back on his belt and turned his attention back to Leo. “You said there were more than a couple of cowboys. How many were there?”

“Three. Third d-boy takes his time getting out of the backseat. Leans into the Toyota. Pokes around. Shuts it down. Then the cavalry shows up and I went about my business. I know when I’m not welcome.”

“Thanks, Leo. You’ve been a big help.”

“Don’t mention it. Listen, Figgsy. You think you could …For old times’ sake.” Leo held his hand out to Figgs.

“Sure,” Figgs said. He took a twenty out of his pocket and handed it to his old friend. For old times’ sake.

T
he ferry ride back to Woods Hole was cold, long, and lonesome. But
it provided the isolation Alves needed before he hit the land and the reality of what he had to do next. Alves’s feelings of loyalty toward Connie were pretty dinged up. The reinvestigation, the reopening of the case, all of it had to be just another case.

The things Andi Norton had told him created a picture of a man he didn’t recognize, a man he never knew. It had been right there in front of him all along. In many ways, Conrad Darget fit Mooney’s profile of the killer. He fit Special Agent John Bland’s profile. But could Connie, a friend, a top prosecutor, be a killer? Could he frame a friend and stand by while that friend committed suicide? More than that, could he have whispered something to Mitch that encouraged him to jump from that court balcony? Connie would have known that Mitch’s final act would show consciousness of guilt.

Maybe he and Mooney
had
been too quick wrapping up the case after Mitch’s death.

All the victims were linked to the South Bay District Courthouse. All of them were linked to Darget’s juries. That’s why he and Mooney had interviewed Connie first. But, he remembered, that interview had been cut short, interrupted by the phone call from Eunice Curran. With the
analysis of the hairs and condom recovered at the final crime scene. The “evidence” that led them to Mitch Beaulieu.

But evidence can be planted.

And what about Nick Costa’s disappearance? The two had a contentious relationship at best. Had Connie’s co-worker gotten too close, seen something Connie didn’t want him to see? Nick Costa’s body had never been found. None of the Blood Bath Killer’s victims’ bodies had ever been recovered. None of those souls ever laid to rest.