2 in the Hat (2 page)

Alves turned to go back down the hill on the other side of the rock. And, there she was, leaning up against a tree, her head tilted, gazing at him. Her face was made up for a night out. She was wearing a light-colored gown with a fancy necklace. It was her pose that set something off in him. Her back was arched, accentuating her chest, her cleavage revealed in the cut of the dress. The seductive pose, her outfit, and the makeup made her seem so alive.

But her eyes, covered in a milky film, told a different story. Alves had spent a lot of time around death in the last few years and he could sense it. If he’d wanted, he could check her pulse the way paramedics and doctors
did before pronouncing death. He could attempt to revive her. But Alves didn’t. She was dead.

As he got closer with his light he saw that the makeup was caked on thick, covering the discoloration of her skin. A thin black wire secured her to the tree. Her hands were tied to her hips with the same wire. Alves tried to move her head, but it was held firmly in place by the wire running through the braid in her long dark hair. Her eyes appeared to be focused on him, asking him for help. But it was too late for that. Her skin was as cold as the early autumn air.

Instinctively he reached for the radio in his back pocket. The radio was back in the car. He used his cell to call 9-1-1, telling the operator, “Detective Alves from Homicide. I’ve got a body at Franklin Park. In the field by the Shattuck. I need you to make all the notifications.”

He had a thought. Maybe she wasn’t looking at him. What had she been staged to look at before he got there? Alves bent and lifted his pant leg. He took his .38 S&W from his ankle holster. He crouched and spun around with his snubby and the Mag-Lite.

There he was, twenty yards away, against a tree, hidden by a thick shrub.

“Police! Get your hands up!” Alves shouted, staying in his crouched position.

No response.

Alves stayed low as he ducked behind the tree Jane Doe was tied to. He made his way to a tree a little closer, training the light on him. The perp hadn’t moved. He was standing fully upright.

“Show me your hands!” Alves commanded, ducking behind another tree. He was less than ten yards away now. He put the light on the perp again.

In the artificial cone of yellow light, Alves saw that the figure was wearing a tuxedo.

Stepping from behind the tree, Alves made his way forward. The man stood unnaturally rigid. Not even a flinch as Alves stepped over brush and dry leaves to reach him. The man was ocean frank, like the girl. The scene was familiar. Nothing he had seen himself. But he had heard enough from his old sergeant Wayne Mooney to know what he had just found.

T
HE OLD CROWN VIC SCREECHED AROUND THE CORNER AS DETECTIVE MARK
Greene gunned the engine. Detective Jack Ahearn radioed dispatch with their location. In the back, Assistant District Attorney Connie Darget held onto the grab handles above each door. There were no seatbelts. As Greene straightened out the car, Connie ripped off the right handle. The left handle held strong. He tossed the detached U of plastic under Ahearn’s seat.

Connie wasn’t the on-call Homicide Response ADA tonight. He was out with the detectives, looking for a witness on a shooting investigation when BPD Operations put out the call for detectives to respond to the ball field.

Some of the prosecutors in the DA’s office thought Connie was an idiot for riding with the cops nights and weekends. But Connie had picked up some pretty good cases being out at the scene.

That was how he’d picked up his first homicide, the Jesse Wilcox murder, a case that remained unsolved. Connie and Angel Alves always said Jesse was going to wind up either dead or in jail. Not six months after his last acquittal, Jesse was found shot to death. If Connie had been able to convict Wilcox on just one of his cases, he’d probably still be alive.

Greene drove down Jewish War Veterans Drive, the road that cuts through the center of the park. It connects Roxbury to Jamaica Plain, from the edge of Grove Hall to Forest Hills. They sped past the Franklin Park Zoo and White Stadium on the right, the golf course on their left. They passed a couple of marked units, one-man patrol cars, stationed to secure the golf course as a crime scene.

“Just before the rotary,” Connie said. An asphalt footpath ran alongside the access road and circled the park. Beyond the path was a grassy area next to two tennis courts, which led to an opening in some trees. The baseball diamond was on the other side of the trees, flanked by hills. Everything beyond the ball field was part of the golf course.

Greene took the left turn and Connie ripped off the left handle. At least the sides matched. He tossed it under Greene’s seat as they jerked to a stop. The street was blocked off by police vehicles, Boston PD and a couple of state troopers.

Seeing the staties reminded Connie that the Shattuck Hospital and the street running through the park were state property. The state police had jurisdiction over them, while the park itself was maintained by the Boston Parks Department and policed by the BPD. On TV and in movies, local and state police fought about who had jurisdiction over a crime scene. In the real world, the state police weren’t so territorial. If anything, there were times when the BPD tried to dump a case on the staties to keep Boston’s homicide rate down. But that wasn’t happening tonight; the troopers were leaning against their cruisers.

Connie and the detectives stepped out of the car. The two detectives were an odd pair. Greene was a little guy who called the shots. Ahearn was huge, bigger than Connie.

Greene nodded to the patrolman assigned to secure the scene, and the three of them slipped under the yellow tape.

Connie caught a glimpse of the small crowd of kids and parents near the tennis courts. The kids were dressed in football gear. Pop Warner football. The crowd was growing along the access road as Connie and the detectives made their way across the field to the heart of the crime scene. It was amazing how many people were out on a Sunday night. Word of tragedy spreads fast.

The only information they had was that Detective Alves from Homicide had found two bodies, Caucasian, possibly teenagers, a male and a female. At first Connie was thinking OD. There had been reports of a
potent shipment of heroin in the city, and those reports usually led to overdoses. But the BPD wouldn’t call in every available detective for a drug overdose.

The BPD had given out intelligence of some minor gang activity amping up in Franklin Hill and Grove Hall, incidents ranging from kids in groups having fights with bottles, sticks, and bats to fatal drive-bys involving shooters on bicycles or in vehicles. But those neighborhoods were on the other side of the park, beyond the golf course and zoo. This section bordered on Jamaica Plain near Forest Hills. No real gang activity here.

“Two white kids get killed and we call in the whole force,” Connie said, the sand of the baseball diamond soft under his feet. “I didn’t see the same kind of attention when George Wheeler’s body was found this morning.”

“Wheeler was just another gangbanger. A Maverick with a bullet in his head. No need to call out the cavalry unless you’re pursuing a suspect,” Greene said.

From a distance, Connie could see the hill at the other end of the ball field bright as daylight. The BPD lighting crew was on scene with what seemed like all of their equipment. They must have driven their trucks off the access road and across the diamond.

“The lighting crew does a nice job,” Greene said.

“They ought to,” Ahearn said. “They’re making enough on overtime. One of the best gigs going. They’re the lighting crew, but they don’t work nights. So, Connie, not only are you the only one not getting paid to be out here, some people are getting paid overtime to do their regular jobs.”

Alves was up ahead, but Connie didn’t recognize the men he was talking with. They looked like bosses, both older and dressed too casually—polo shirts and khakis—as if they’d been called away from a cookout. Alves was wearing a faded pair of jeans and a long sleeve T-shirt. Connie was used to seeing him at crime scenes in his tailored suits, crisp white shirts and conservative ties.

Connie’d have to wait until they broke the huddle before checking with Alves. By statute, Connie knew that the DA’s office was in charge here, but in reality, the BPD detectives ran the investigation at the crime scene. Every second that passed, that scene slipped away. Some part of the killer remained at a fresh scene. Almost as though he had just stepped away and was due back any minute. Not at this scene though—the criminalists from
the BPD crime lab were searching for evidence, the detectives were interviewing witnesses, the ID Unit was labeling and photographing.

Connie needed to be patient. When Alves finished up with his supervisors, Connie would see the part of the crime scene that would teach him the most about the killer.

L
uther came down the stairs of his triple decker and into the street
. Like everyone else, he wanted to know what was going on. It seemed like ten solid minutes that the sirens hadn’t let up. He’d watched from his window as one police cruiser after another headed toward Franklin Park. Luther walked to Columbia Road and then across Blue Hill Avenue where a crowd had gathered between the entrance to the zoo and the golf course. Officers were stationed there, blocking the park’s entrance. Something big had happened and he needed to find out what.

Luther was in a dicey spot. On the one hand, he was one of the mayor’s Street Saviors, a youth worker helping gang members choose a better path. Not the one he’d chosen, the one that led straight to prison. Saviors were city employees, like the police. But there was no love lost between the cops and the Saviors. Most of the cops looked at him and his partner Richard Zardino as ex-cons who couldn’t be trusted.

If he was going to get the 4-1-1 on what went down in the park, it wouldn’t be because he was a Street Savior, it would be because he was street. He continued down Blue Hill Avenue, avoiding the police, skirting the perimeter of the park. He turned right onto American Legion Parkway and saw a group gathered across from the Franklin Hill Projects.

This was the second time Luther had come to this section of the park
today. The body of George Wheeler—that was his government name, his street name was G-Wheel—had been found by some golfers. God rest his soul. Luther had been working with Wheeler for months. Trying to sign him up to get his GED so he could take college classes. Trying to get him to go legit. But G-Wheel wasn’t likely to give up the life. Too entrenched. One of the leaders of the Mavericks. They’d met in prison when Wheeler was doing a deuce on a gun. Luther tried to use their relationship to squash some beefs before they got blown out of whack and people got shot. Things had been cool. Until this morning.

Luther recognized the faces of some of the dudes. They were part of George Wheeler’s crew. Maybe they had already retaliated for G-Wheel’s death. That would only bring more heat on them from the police and more drama from their enemies.

Luther approached one of the familiar faces.

“What’s up, Luther? You back already? You worried we stuck on stupid?”

Luther gave him some dap. “I know you’re not stupid.” The face in front of him was shiny with excitement. Eager, almost.

“We didn’t do nothing. Yet. We’re gonna chill for a while. Make sure we know who did G. Let them think about when we coming for them.”

“Why’s everything shut down?”

“Why you think? Po-po don’t shut everything down cuz some nigga got shot.”

He was right. This wasn’t the response for a dead brother. That morning, police had closed off a small area while they investigated Wheeler’s death. There’d been a couple of detectives and a kid from the crime lab working the case. All around them, the golfers continued their games like Wheeler’s body was a squirrel dead in the street, making their way around the inconvenience of the crime scene tape as if it were another sand trap. Luther had recognized the sergeant in charge of the scene earlier. Ray Figgs from Homicide. Luther knew him from the neighborhood. Sergeant Figgs grew up in Roxbury and knew everyone on the street. At one time he was one of the top homicide investigators. Now, word was, he was more interested in Johnnie Walker than George Wheeler.

“What happened?” Luther asked.

“White boy and his woman. Dead. Now you see po-po try to catch the dude that did the shit. Already closed the park. Brought in the dogs. Next be the Feds trying to squeeze everyone.”

Luther felt the heat of anger rise in his chest. He had seen this before. Feeling like this was what got him his prison time. Ten years ago, Marcus was murdered and the police did nothing. Luther had stood by, the helpless kid brother, watching his mother come to see that her oldest son’s life meant nothing to anybody but the two of them. Before Marcus got shot, Luther had never been in any trouble. Never arrested for trespassing or disorderly. And, back then, everybody in Roxbury was stopped by the police and questioned. If you talked back, you had a disorderly charge for your record. Stand on school property and you got yourself a trespassing. But when Marcus died, Luther had to square things.

Marcus was not dead and buried a month when the white kid-couples first started getting themselves killed. The newspapers were all over the police to catch the killer. Prom Night this and that killer. Now, ten years later, it was as though it was happening again. No one cared about George Wheeler. Two white kids get whacked and the National Guard gets called out. Black kid gets killed and they bring in the washed up brother with a badge.

C
onnie watched Alves direct the investigation, noticed how he didn’t bark out orders like Wayne Mooney. Since Connie and the detectives had arrived, Alves had expanded the crime scene, closing the street and sealing off the perimeter of Franklin Park. This kept the media and spectators out. It also allowed the K-9 units to search for a potential suspect in the park without distraction. The more experienced patrolmen were taking the names of the gawkers who had gathered along the street and recording the plate numbers of the cars in the area before clearing the park.