The Soul Collectors (13 page)

The girls didn’t like the way he shifted his attention away from them.

‘Well, hello there,’ he said, offering his hand. ‘I’m Timmy’s roommate, Gregg.’

‘Darby. Nice to meet you.’

‘I’ve seen you before.’

‘I live upstairs.’

‘Oh. I was pretty sure you were a model.’ His smile was as perfect and charming as his face. ‘You’re definitely pretty enough to model swimsuits and stuff.’

‘You’ve got me confused with someone else,’ she said, and, looking back at Tim, nodded with her chin to get moving.

Tim’s small bedroom was surprisingly neat for a college student, the walls stuffed with posters and photographs, some framed, of Boston Red Sox players and different ball parks from across the country.

‘Ted Williams,’ she said, pointing to a signed picture. ‘You’ve got good taste.’

‘Best there ever was and ever will be.’

Darby moved to the corner window. The SUV was still there.

‘Can I get you a beer?’ Tim asked.

‘I’m all set, thanks. I won’t be here that long.’

Tim lingered close by, looking anxious.

‘You don’t have to stay here,’ she said. ‘Go back to the party.’

‘Nah, that’s okay. Those girls are interested in Gregg, anyway.’

‘He strikes me as sort of a douche.’

Tim chuckled. ‘He sort of is. And the girls love it for some reason. The more he shits on them, the harder they fight.’

‘That will change after college, trust me.’ She couldn’t see anything behind those tinted windows. How many people were in there?

‘He’s going to move to Hollywood,’ Tim said. ‘Going to be a famous actor.’

‘He’ll wind up doing soft-core porn. If he’s lucky, he’ll find some rich cougar looking for arm candy and shack up with her.’

‘What’s going on with that guy you hang out with, what’s his name, the one who looks like Tom Brady?’

‘Coop.’

‘Right, Coop. Good guy. Where’s he been? I haven’t seen him around.’

‘He moved to London three months ago.’

‘You guys still, you know, dating or whatever?’

‘We never dated,’ she said, and the night he left flashed through her mind: Coop running back through the rain and kissing her. He called her later, from the airport, and he told her how he really felt about her. Now, each time they spoke on the phone, he didn’t bring up what had happened between them.

You haven’t either
, a voice added.

A Boston squad car, lights on but sirens off, came to an abrupt stop in front of the SUV. Two patrolmen jumped out, leaving their doors hanging open as they drew their weapons. Another squad car pulled up alongside the SUV, blocking the driver’s-side door.

Showtime. Darby moved away from the window.

‘Thanks, Tim.’

‘You taking off?’

She nodded. ‘Got some work I need to do.’

‘Before you go, I was wondering … ’ He swallowed, then swiped a hand across his mouth. ‘I was thinking maybe we could grab a beer together, or something.’

Darby smiled. ‘Tim, I’m flattered. If I was your age, I’d take you up on that offer in a heartbeat.’

The hope crumbled in his eyes, and his pale face reddened with embarrassment. ‘I wasn’t asking you, like, out on a date or anything. I thought we could, you know, hang out or something.’

‘Hang out,’ Darby said. ‘Sure. Absolutely.’

Tim, ever the gentleman, walked her to the front door. Even held it open for her.

Darby said just loud enough for Gregg to hear: I’ll call you next week, Tim, and we’ll set something up.’

She gave him a quick hug and a peck on the cheek before leaving.

25

Darby stood on the stoop of her building. The steady pulse of blue and whites flashing from the rooftops of the two Boston squad cars lit up the corner of her street. She could see the SUV. It was a Chevy Tahoe. The passenger’s-side door was hanging open. The interior light was on but nobody was inside.

Two men dressed in suits, their jackets buttoned, stood outside.
Feds
, she thought. The first guy was white and middle aged, and had sandy-blond hair and a crooked nose. He stood on the kerb with his hands on top of his head, arguing with a patrolman pointing a nine at him. There was lots of shouting but she couldn’t hear what was being said, their words lost behind the wind and busy traffic on Cambridge Street.

The second guy was Italian or Greek, a Tony Soprano type with thinning black hair that had been combed back over his bald spot. He was taller than his partner, maybe six feet, and fatter. He leaned forward with his hands splayed across the front hood, the buttons of his suit jacket straining against the swell of his gut. He was being frisked. He wasn’t speaking and he ignored the scene happening around him, his gaze locked on her building. On her.

Darby didn’t recognize him or the blond man. Was confident she had never seen either man before. She
did
recognize the patrolman shining his flashlight on the SUV’s interior seats: Jimmy Murphy, an old flatfoot leftover from an era when the Irish made up the majority of the Boston police force. He was thick and jowly and had a fine network of spider veins covering his nose and cheeks from a lifetime of hard drinking. Darby headed down her front steps, making a mental note to give Jimmy a call sometime later that night or the next day, see if she could get the names of the two feds so she could pay them a visit.

Fat Tony kept eyeing her. She held his gaze for a moment, giving away nothing, and as she crossed the street, heading for the alley between the college and the oldest brick townhouse on the block, she saw Fat Soprano make a move for the car door. The patrolman frisking him pushed him hard against the hood. Lots of shouting and another patrolman pressed his nine closer to Tony Soprano’s head. She caught the worried expression on Fat Tony’s face just before she ducked into the alley.

Darby emerged on Hanover Street and then went through another alley and walked on to Joy. The one-way streets, jam-packed with parked cars, were dark and quiet. A few people were out, walking home or to one of the bars or restaurants that lined Cambridge. As she walked to the best place to pick up a cab – the corner of Cambridge and Charles Street, on the other side of Beacon Hill – she thought about Fat Tony’s worried look.

The man’s cover was blown. He was going to get his ass chewed out by his superiors. There’d be demerits, maybe even a possible relocation to some federal outpost. A natural reaction. She would have bought off on it if he hadn’t first tried to go for the door. Like he needed to call someone and let this person know where she was heading.

Why? They had installed a tracking device in her jacket. It was now sitting in her jeans pocket and it was broadcasting a signal. Fat Tony shouldn’t be worried. But he had made a move for the door, like he was afraid of losing sight of her. Like he had to radio for help or back-up.

Darby emerged on the end of Charles Street, looking for a cab. As she waited, she thought about the tracking device. The design was something the feds probably used – very high-tech, sent a wireless signal to a nearby computer – but the installation had been sloppy. The feds, generally speaking, weren’t sloppy. They planned and prepared and executed their surveillance ops with an admirable efficiency. If the feds were behind this, they would have come inside her condo, taken pictures, made sure everything was put back together properly. They wouldn’t have left the broken stitching in her jacket.

Maybe the feds weren’t responsible for this sloppy work. Maybe someone else was, like one of the men she had encountered inside the Rizzo home. Men who knew she was alive and wanted to see where she would go, what she would do.

26

At a quarter past eight, Darby stepped through the Boston Police Department’s revolving front doors for the first time since her suspension, and brushed the hair out of her eyes. It had been windy as hell out there and she had forgotten to tie her hair behind her head before leaving the condo.

The long, wide lobby of dark brown and yellow marble hummed with activity. The phones at the main desk kept ringing; and crowds of patrolmen and plainclothes detectives, plus a handful of lawyers she knew, had cornered themselves into small groups for private discussion. Lots of familiar faces here, and she caught more than one tired or bloodshot gaze shift her way as she made her way to the security checkpoint set up in front of the bank of elevators.

A pot-bellied blue uniform sat in a stiff chair. His name was Chet Archer, and he had manned the security checkpoint since the beginning of the year. Working this spot was a highly sought-after position for those patrolmen who had been injured on the job and didn’t want to go out on disability. Working it this time of night was a cush-gig. Park your duff on a stool and look up every now and then to check the ID of some cop or lab tech, wave them on through and go back to reading a book or magazine – or, as in Chet’s case, click the time away on a portable videogame.

‘Playing anything good?’ she asked.

Chet looked up from his game.

‘Blackjack,’ he said. ‘I’m heading off to Foxwoods this weekend with the missus, need to brush up on my skills.’

Chet leaned forward in his chair, squinting as his gaze shifted to the laminated badge hanging from a cord around her neck. Darby unzipped her leather jacket and placed it on the conveyor belt for the X-ray machine.

Chet got to his feet slowly, wincing in pain.

‘How’d the knee replacement go?’ she asked.

‘I just got the other one done.’ He gripped the top of the X-ray machine for balance. ‘What brings you by, Darby?’

‘I’m coming back to work tomorrow, so I decided to swing by and catch up on a few things, take advantage of the peace and quiet.’

‘Nobody told me anything about that.’

‘Probably because Leland called me about an hour ago.’

‘He’s gone for the day.’

Darby had counted on that, since Leland had called her from his cell phone. Leland Pratt, ever the efficient administrator and state employee, always locked his office at 4:30 p.m., the time the lab closed for the day.

Chet said, ‘I can’t let you up there without his permission.’

‘So call him.’ She glanced to the phone hanging on the wall behind Chet.

‘I don’t have his cell number, let alone the one for his home.’

‘No problem. I know them by heart. Let me know when you’re ready.’

Chet shifted, grimacing. Leland was a pro when it came to kissing ass upwards but not downwards. He virtually ignored people he considered beneath him. People like Chet.

Right now Chet was wondering whether it was worth the risk of placing a call to King Leland’s Brookline palace. Chet knew he had a good gig and didn’t want any trouble. And a top pencil-pusher like King Leland could make a lot of trouble if he got pissed at being bothered at home.

‘I’ll call him,’ Darby said.

Chet waved a hand. ‘No, that’s okay, I’ll take your word for it. Go on through. And welcome back, Darby.’

Walking out of the elevator, Darby removed the cord from around her neck. She held her breath as she waved the laminated badge in front of the keycard reader that guarded the lab’s twin steel doors.

The keycard’s light turned green. The locks clicked back and she felt the trapped breath nearly explode past her lips, the tightness in her chest drizzling away.

Dim lighting hung over the empty desk where the lab secretary sat. Darby walked past it and then turned and looked down the hall. The doors for the two-person offices were open, all the rooms dark. The door for Serology, where she had spent most of her early adult working life, was dark. No one was here. It didn’t surprise her. With the bad state of the economy, the department’s budget had been cut, and the first thing to go was overtime. Nobody worked past 4:30 unless it was an emergency, and then the overtime had to be approved by Leland, who was all too willing to say no. Nothing excited the man more than staying under budget.

Darby turned around and walked down the hall to her corner office. Her name plate had already been removed, but the locks hadn’t been changed. Her key turned without a problem.

Clicking on the light, she found that the few items she had hung on her wall had been taken down and placed into boxes. The wall behind her desk – her
former
desk, she reminded herself – was crammed full of Leland’s framed diplomas and several pictures of him shaking hands with the mayor, the governor and new Massachusetts senator. There was a picture of him with President Clinton and one with Hillary Clinton. And Leland, through his Rolodex of political connections, had somehow weaseled his way into getting a picture with President Obama. The pricey frames had been strategically positioned on the wall so the person entering the office would know he or she was dealing with a man of
great
importance.

Of course he’d take over my office. It’s slightly bigger than his and has more windows and a much better view. That’s how pricks like Leland keep score
.

Darby pulled out the chair behind the desk, sat and turned on the computer. Old and slow, it took a long time to boot up.

She entered her name and password and pressed the
ENTER
key.

ACCESS DENIED
.

Shit
. She was locked out. No way to access Charlie Rizzo’s case file – and now no way to access the lab’s fingerprint database. The same password worked on both systems.

Darby leaned back in her chair and stared out of the window, thinking.

The first problem – information on Charlie Rizzo’s case – was easy enough to solve. The lead investigator was a Greek guy by the name of Stan Karakas, who had long since retired from the force. The question was whether or not he was still living in the city – or the state.

The Retired Boston Police Officers Association would know. They’d have contact information, address and phone numbers. Their offices were closed now, but she could call them first thing tomorrow morning. Better yet, she could drive over to West Roxbury and talk to someone in person.

Now the second and more pressing problem: what to do with the papers inside her jacket pocket? She could ask one of the lab techs to do it on the sly. Randy Scott would do it, no questions asked … but if Leland found out, the prick would go out of his way to punish Randy. Scratch Randy. Scratch anyone here at the lab, which left her –