Mystic River (29 page)

Fuck Sean. And those eyes of his. And that voice. And the way you could see the women in the kitchen all but drop their panties when he came in the room. Fuck him and his good looks. Fuck him and his morally superior attitude and his funny/cool stories and his cop’s swagger and his name in the paper.

Dave wasn’t stupid, either. He’d be up to the challenge once he got his head straight. He just needed to get his head straight. If that meant taking it off and screwing it back on tight, then he’d figure out a way to do even that.

The biggest problem right now was that the Boy Who’d Escaped from Wolves and Grown Up was showing his face too much. Dave had hoped that what he’d done Saturday night would settle that, shut the fucker up, send him back deep into the forest of Dave’s mind. He’d wanted blood that night, the Boy, he’d wanted to cause some fucking pain. So Dave had obliged.

At first it had just been minor, a few punches, a kick. But then it had gotten out of control, Dave feeling the rage welling up inside of him as the Boy took over. And the Boy
was one mean customer. The Boy wasn’t satisfied until he saw pieces of brain.

But then, once it was over, the Boy receded. He went away and left Dave to clean up the mess. And Dave had done that. He’d done a damn good job of it. (Maybe not as good as he’d hoped, sure, but still pretty good.) And he’d done it—specifically—so the Boy would stay gone for a while.

But the Boy was a prick. Here was the Boy again, knocking on the door, telling Dave he was coming out, ready or not. We got things to do, Dave.

The avenue looked a little blurry before him, sliding from side to side as he walked, but Dave knew they were nearing the Last Drop. They were nearing the two-block shithole of freaks and prostitutes, everyone gladly selling what Dave had had torn from him.

Torn from me, the Boy said. You grew up. Don’t try to carry my cross.

The worst were the kids. They were like goblins. They darted out from doorways or the shells of cars and offered you blow jobs. They offered you fucks for twenty bucks. They’d do anything.

The youngest, the one Dave had seen Saturday night, couldn’t have been older than eleven. He had circles of grime around his eyes and white, white skin, and a big bushel of matted red hair on his head, which had only underscored the goblin effect. He should have been home watching sitcoms but he was out here on the street, offering blow jobs to freaks.

Dave had seen him from across the street as he’d walked out of the Last Drop and stood by his car. The kid stood against a street pole, smoking a cigarette, and when he locked eyes with Dave, Dave felt it. The stirring. The desire to melt. To take the red-haired kid’s hand and find a quiet place together. It would be so easy, so relaxing, so fucking welcome to just give in. Give in to what he’d been feeling for the last decade at least.

Yes, the Boy said. Do it.

But (and this is where Dave’s brain always split in half) he knew deep in his soul that this would be the worst sin of all. He knew it would be crossing a line—no matter how inviting—from which he could never come back. He knew that if he crossed that line, he’d never be able to feel whole, that he might just as well have stayed in that basement with Henry and George for the rest of his life. He would tell himself this in times of temptation, passing school bus stops and playgrounds, public swimming pools in the summer. He would tell himself that he was not going to become Henry and George. He was better than that. He was raising a son. He loved his wife. He would be strong. This was what he told himself more and more every year.

But that wasn’t helping Saturday night. Saturday night, the urge was as strong as he’d ever felt it. The red-haired kid leaning against the light pole seemed to know this. He smiled around his cigarette at Dave, and Dave felt tugged toward the curb. He felt as if he stood barefoot on a slope made of satin.

And then a car had pulled up across the street, and after some talk, the kid had climbed in after giving Dave a pitying glance over the hood. Dave had watched the car, a two-toned, midnight-blue-and-white Cadillac, pull across the avenue and come toward him into the rear of the Last Drop’s parking lot. Dave climbed into his car, and the Cadillac pulled back by the overgrown trees that spilled over the sagging fence. The driver shut off the lights but left the engine running, and the Boy had whispered in his ear: Henry and George, Henry and George, Henry and George…

Tonight, before he could reach the Last Drop, Dave turned around even though the Boy was screaming in his ears. The Boy was screaming, I am you, I am you, I am you.

And Dave wanted to stop and cry. He wanted to put his hand out against the nearest building and weep, because he knew the Boy was right. The Boy Who’d Escaped from Wolves and Grown Up had become a Wolf himself. He’d become Dave.

Dave the Wolf.

It must have happened recently, because Dave couldn’t remember any body-racking instance in which he’d felt his soul shift and evaporate to make way for this new entity. But it had happened. Probably while he slept.

But he couldn’t stop. This section of avenue was too dangerous, too likely to be populated by junkies who’d see Dave, drunk as he was, as an easy mark. There, right now, across the street, he could see a car trolling along slowly, watching him, waiting for him to give off the scent of the victim.

He sucked in a big breath and straightened his walk, concentrated on looking confident and aloof. He put a bit of rise into his shoulders, gave his eyes a “fuck you” glare and started heading back the way he’d come, back toward home, his head not any clearer, really, what with the Boy still screaming in his ears, but Dave decided to ignore him. He could do that. He was strong. He was Dave the Wolf.

And the volume of the Boy’s voice did lessen. It became more conversational as Dave walked back through the Flats.

I am you, the Boy said in the tone of a friend. I am you.

C
ELESTE CAME OUT
of the house with Michael half-asleep on her shoulder and discovered that Dave had taken the car. She’d parked it half a block up, surprised to get the space this late on a weekday night, but now there was a blue Jeep in its place.

That hadn’t figured into her plans. She’d seen herself placing Michael in the passenger seat and their bags in the backseat and driving the three miles to the Econo Lodge along the expressway.

“Shit,” she said aloud, and resisted the urge to scream.

“Mommy?” Michael mumbled.

“It’s okay, Mike.”

And maybe it was, because she looked back up to see a cab turning off Perthshire onto Buckingham Avenue. Ce
leste raised the hand that held Michael’s bag, and the cab pulled over right in front of her, Celeste thinking she could spare the six bucks for a ride to the Econo Lodge. She could spare a hundred if it got her out of here right now, far enough away to think things through without having to watch for the turn of a doorknob and the return of a man who may have already decided she was a vampire, worthy only of a stake through her heart followed by a swift beheading, just to be sure.

“Where you going?” the cabbie said as Celeste put her bags on the seat and slid in beside them with Michael on her shoulder.

Anywhere, she wanted to say. Anywhere but here.

“Y
OU TOWED
his car?” Sean said.

“His car was towed,” Whitey said. “Not the same thing.”

As they pulled out of the morning rush-hour traffic and down onto the East Buckingham exit ramp, Sean said, “For what kind of cause?”

“It was abandoned,” Whitey said, whistling lightly through his teeth as he turned onto Roseclair.

“Where?” Sean said. “In front of the man’s house?”

“Oh, no,” Whitey said. “The car was found down in Rome Basin along the parkway. Lucky for us the parkway’s State jurisdiction, ain’t it? Appears someone jacked it, took it for a joyride, then abandoned it. These things happen, you know?”

Sean had woken up this morning from a dream in which he’d held his daughter and spoken her name, even though he didn’t know it and couldn’t remember what he’d said in the dream, so he was still a little foggy.

“We found blood,” Whitey said.

“Where?”

“The front seat of Boyle’s car.”

“How much?”

Whitey held his thumb and index finger a hair’s width apart. “A bit. Found some more in the trunk.”

“In the trunk,” Sean said.

“A lot more actually.”

“So?”

“So, it’s at the lab.”

“No,” Sean said. “I meant so what if you found blood in the trunk? Katie Marcus never got in anyone’s trunk.”

“That’s a fly in the ointment, sure.”

“Sarge, your search of the car’s going to be tossed out.”

“No.”

“No?”

“The car was stolen and abandoned in State jurisdiction. Purely for insurance purposes and, I might add, in the best interest of the owner—”

“You did a physical search and filed a report.”

“Ah, you’re quick, boy.”

They pulled up in front of Dave Boyle’s house and Whitey raised the gearshift on the driver’s column into park. He killed the engine. “I got enough to bring him in for a chat. That’s all I want right now.”

Sean nodded, knowing there was no point in arguing with the man. Whitey got to be a sergeant in the Homicide Unit by the dog-to-a-bone tenacity he had regarding his hunches. You didn’t talk him out of his hunches, you rode them out.

“What about the ballistics?” Sean said.

“That’s a weird one, too,” Whitey said as they sat looking at Dave’s house, Whitey making no move to leave just yet. “The gun was a thirty-eight Smith like we figured. Part of a lot stolen from a gun dealer in New Hampshire in ’eighty-one. The same gun that killed Katherine Marcus was involved in a liquor store holdup in ’eighty-two. Right here in Buckingham.”

“The Flats?”

Whitey shook his head. “Up in Rome Basin, place called Looney Liquors. It was a two-man job, both guys wearing rubber masks. They came in through the back after the owner had shut the front doors, and the first guy into the store fired a warning shot that went through a bottle of rye and embedded in the wall. Rest of the robbery went smooth-
’n’-styling, but the bullet was recovered. Ballistics matched it to the same gun as the one killed the Marcus girl.”

“So that would tend to point in another direction, don’t you think?” Sean said. “Nineteen-eighty-two, Dave was, like, seventeen and starting out at Raytheon. I don’t think he was pulling any liquor store jobs.”

“Don’t mean the
gun
didn’t eventually end up in his hands. Shit, kid, you know the way they get passed around.” Whitey didn’t sound as sure of himself as he had last night, but he said, “Let’s go get him,” and pushed open his door.

Sean got out of the passenger side and they walked up to Dave’s place, Whitey thumbing the cuffs on his hip like he was hoping he’d get an excuse to use them.

J
IMMY PARKED
his car and carried a cardboard tray of coffee cups and a bag of doughnuts across the cracked tar parking lot toward the Mystic River. The cars slammed across the metal extension spans of the Tobin Bridge above him, and Katie knelt by the water’s edge with Just Ray Harris, both of them peering into the river. Dave Boyle was there, too, his bruised hand ballooned to the size of a boxing glove. Dave sat in a sagging lawn chair beside Celeste and Annabeth. Celeste had some kind of zipper contraption covering her mouth and Annabeth smoked two cigarettes at once. All three of them wore black sunglasses and didn’t look at Jimmy. They stared up at the underside of the bridge, and gave off an air that said they’d prefer to be left alone in their lawn chairs, thank you very much.

Jimmy put the coffee and doughnuts down beside Katie and knelt between her and Just Ray. He looked down at the water and saw his reflection, saw Katie’s and Just Ray’s, too, as they turned toward him, Ray with a big red fish clamped between his teeth, the fish still flopping.

Katie said, “I dropped my dress in the river.”

Jimmy said, “I can’t see it.”

The fish plopped out of Just Ray’s mouth and landed in the water, lay there on top of the surface flopping away.

Katie said, “He’ll get it. He’s hunting fish.”

“Tasted just like chicken,” Ray said.

Jimmy felt Katie’s warm hand on his back, and then he felt Ray’s on the back of his neck, and Katie said, “Why don’t you go get it, Dad?”

And they pushed him over the edge and Jimmy saw the black water and the flopping fish rise up to meet him and he knew he was going to drown. He opened his mouth to scream and the fish jumped up inside there, cutting off his oxygen, and the water felt like black paint when his face plunged into it.

He opened his eyes and turned his head, saw the clock reading seven-sixteen, and he couldn’t remember coming to bed. He must have, though, because here he was, Annabeth sleeping beside him, Jimmy waking up to a brand-new day with an appointment to pick out a headstone in a little over an hour, and Just Ray Harris and the Mystic River knocking at his door.

T
HE KEY
to any successful interrogation was to get as much time as possible before the suspect demanded a lawyer. The hard cases—the dealers and gangbangers and bikers and mobbed-up guys—usually asked for a “mouth” right off the bat. You could fuck with them a little bit, try to rattle them before the lawyer showed up, but for the most part, you were going to have to rely on physical evidence to make your case. Rarely had Sean taken a hard guy into the box and come out with much of use.

When you were dealing with regular citizens or first-time felons, on the other hand, most of your cases were dunked during Q & A’s. The “road rage” case, Sean’s career topper so far, had been made like that. Out in Middlesex, guy’s driving home one night, the right front tire of his SUV came off at eighty miles an hour. Just came off, rolled across the
highway. The SUV flipped over nine or ten times, and the guy, Edwin Hurka, was dead on-scene.

Turned out the lug nuts on both his front tires were loose. So they were looking at involuntary manslaughter at best because prevailing opinion was that it was probably just some hungover mechanic’s error, and Sean and his partner, Adolph, found out that the victim did have his tires replaced just a few weeks before. But Sean had also found a piece of paper in the victim’s glove compartment that bothered him. It was a license plate, hastily scrawled, and when Sean ran it through the RMV computer, he’d come up with the name Alan Barnes. He’d dropped by Barnes’s house and asked the guy who answered the door if he was Alan Barnes. The guy, nervous as hell, said, Yeah, why? And Sean, feeling it through his whole body, said, “I’d like to talk to you about some lug nuts.”

Barnes broke right there in his doorway, told Sean he’d just meant to fuck the guy’s car up a little, give him a scare, the two of them having gotten into it a week before in the merge lane heading into the airport tunnel, Barnes so pissed by the end of it that he hung back, skipped his appointment, and followed Edwin Hurka home, waited till the guy had shut off all the lights in his house before he went to work with his tire iron.

People were stupid. They killed each other over the dumbest things and then they hung around hoping to get caught, walked into court pleading not guilty after giving some cop a four-page, signed confession. It was knowing how stupid they really were that was a cop’s best weapon. Let them talk. Always. Let them explain. Let them unload their guilt as you plied them with coffee and the tape recorder reels spun.

And when they asked for a lawyer—and the average citizen almost always
asked
—you frowned and asked if they were sure that’s what they wanted and let a very unfriendly vibe fill the room until they decided that they’d really like all three of you to be friends, so maybe they’d talk a bit more
before they brought that lawyer down here and spoiled the mood.

Dave didn’t ask for a lawyer, though. Not once. He sat in the chair that bucked when you leaned too far back in it, and he looked hungover and annoyed and pissed at Sean, in particular, but he didn’t look scared and he didn’t look nervous, and Sean could tell it was beginning to get to Whitey.

“Look, Mr. Boyle,” Whitey said, “we know you left McGills before you said you did. We know you showed up a half-hour later in the parking lot of the Last Drop around the same time the Marcus girl left. And we sure as shit know you didn’t get that swollen hand by banging it off a wall making a pool shot.”

Dave groaned. He said, “How about a Sprite, something like that?”

“In a minute,” Whitey said for the fourth time in the half an hour they’d been in here. “Tell us what really happened that night, Mr. Boyle.”

“I already did.”

“You lied.”

Dave shrugged. “Your opinion.”

“No,” Whitey said. “Fact. You lied about leaving McGills. The fucking clock was stopped, Mr. Boyle, five minutes
before
you claim to have left.”

“Five whole minutes?”

“You think this is funny?”

Dave leaned back a bit in the chair and Sean waited to hear the telltale crack it emitted before it would buckle, but it didn’t, Dave pushing it to the edge, but not going any further.

“No, Sergeant, I don’t think it’s funny. I’m tired. I’m hungover. And my car was not only stolen but now you’re telling me you won’t release it to me. You say I left McGills five minutes before I said I did?”

“At least.”

“Fine. I’ll give you that. Maybe I did. I don’t look at my watch as much as you guys apparently do. So if you say I
left McGills at ten of one instead of five of one, I say, okay. Maybe I did. Oops. But that’s it. I went home right after that. I didn’t go to any other bar.”

“You
were
seen in the parking lot of—”

“No,” Dave said. “A Honda with a dented quarter panel was seen. Right? You know how many Hondas there are in this city? Come on, man.”

“How many with dents, though, Mr. Boyle, in the same place as yours?”

Dave shrugged. “A bunch, I bet.”

Whitey looked at Sean and Sean could feel that they were losing. Dave was right—they could probably find twenty Hondas with dented quarter panels on the passenger side. Twenty, easy. And if Dave could throw that at them, then his lawyer would come up with a lot more.

Whitey came around the back of Dave’s chair and said, “Tell us how the blood got in your car.”

“What blood?”

“The blood we found in your front seat. Let’s start there.”

Dave said, “How about that Sprite, Sean?”

Sean said, “Sure.”

Dave smiled. “I get it. You’re a good cop. How about a meatball sub while you’re at it?”

Sean, half out of his chair, sat back down. “Ain’t your bitch, Dave. Looks like you’ll have to wait awhile.”

“You’re somebody’s bitch, though. Aren’t you, Sean?” There was a crazy leer in his eyes when he said it, a preening cockiness, and Sean started thinking maybe Whitey was right. Sean wondered if his father, seeing this Dave Boyle, would have the same opinion of him as he’d had last night.

Sean said, “The blood on your front seat, Dave. Answer the sergeant.”

Dave looked back up at Whitey. “We got a chain-link fence in our backyard. You know the kind, with the links curling inward at the top? I was doing yard work the other
day. My landlord’s old. I do it, he keeps the rent reasonable. So I’m cutting away these bamboo-looking things he’s got back there—”

Whitey sighed, but Dave didn’t seem to notice.

“—and I slip. I got this electric hedge trimmer in my hand, and I don’t want to drop it, so when I slip, I fall into the chain-link fence and I slice myself against it.” He patted his rib cage. “Right here. It wasn’t bad, but it bled like hell. Like ten minutes later? I gotta go pick up my son at Little League practice. It was probably still bleeding, I got into the seat. That’s the best I can figure it.”

Whitey said, “So that was your blood in the front seat?”

“Like I said—best I can figure it.”

“And what blood type are you?”

“B negative.”

Whitey gave him a broad grin as he came back around the chair, perched on the edge of the table. “Funny. That’s the exact type we found in the front seat.”

Dave held up his hands. “Well, there you go.”

Whitey mimicked Dave’s hands. “Not quite. Care to explain the blood in the trunk? That blood wasn’t B negative.”

“I don’t know anything about any blood in my trunk.”

Whitey chuckled. “No idea how a good half pint of blood got in the trunk of your car?”

“No, I don’t,” Dave said.

Whitey leaned in, patted Dave’s shoulder. “I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Boyle, that this is not the avenue you want to take. You claim in court that you don’t know how someone else’s blood got in your car, how’s that going to look?”

“Fine, I suppose.”

“How do you figure?”

Dave leaned back again and Whitey’s hand fell from his shoulder. “You filled out the report, Sergeant.”

“What report?” Whitey said.

Sean saw it coming and thought, Oh, shit, he’s got us.

“The stolen car report,” Dave said.

“So?”

“So,” Dave said, “the car wasn’t in my possession last night. I don’t know what the car thieves used it for, but maybe you want to find out, because it sounds like they were up to no good.”

For a long thirty seconds, Whitey sat completely still, and Sean could feel it dawning on him—he’d gotten too smart and he’d fucked himself. Just about anything they found in that car would be thrown out in court because Dave’s lawyer could claim the car thieves had put it there.