Brighton (24 page)

KEVIN DROVE
back to his apartment and sat in his living room, thinking about Finn and whether he deserved to die. And whether the bloodlust of killing someone hadn’t been what Kevin had wanted all along. Around midnight, he thought about the snub-nosed revolver. He’d gotten it from a Boston detective named Barry Fitzpatrick. One night Kevin was drinking in a Dorchester bar called the Eire when Fitzpatrick came in and sat down beside him. He was lean, with a heavy Adam’s apple and blue stubble providing cover for pitted cheeks. When he spoke, he kept his head down and his voice low. Kevin found himself leaning forward on his stool and still only catching every other word. Fitzpatrick wanted to talk about a feature Kevin had written on a young female detective who’d been shot and killed in the line of duty. The detective had been Fitzpatrick’s partner and he carried her death in worn eyes and the tired rag of a smile he flashed whenever he mentioned her name. Six months after their drink, Fitzpatrick would put his service weapon in his mouth and pull the trigger. That night, however, it was just talk. And booze. Their first drink became three. Three became five and a round of shots. Pretty soon they were closing
the place. Kevin was feeling it and decided to grab a cab home. Fitzpatrick seemed none the worse for wear and insisted on giving him a lift. Fitzgerald parked in front of a hydrant on Cambridge Street. Before Kevin could get out, the detective reached across and pulled the snub-nosed from his glovie. He said it was a throwaway. Unregistered. Cold. Something to keep in the apartment just in case.

Kevin found the piece wrapped in a towel on a shelf in his bedroom closet. He took it back to the living room and laid it down on the coffee table. Kevin drank a beer, two beers, stood under a hot shower, and slept for three hours with the gun beside his bed. He woke at three thirty and went for a drive along the river, rolling down the back windows and letting the cold air blow across his scalp. The steering wheel moved smoothly under his hands, the car knowing what turns to make and where it needed to go. He pulled quietly to the curb and killed the engine. Then he called Mo Stanley.

“What time is it?”

“Four thirty, five.”

“In the morning? Fuck, Kevin.”

“You got a pen?”

“What?”

“Get a pen.”

He listened as she hunted around, then came back on the line. “What?”

“Take down this name. Curtis Jordan. J-O-R-D-A-N.”

“Got it. Who is he?”

“He was a drug dealer. Lived in Fidelis Way. Shot and killed in nineteen seventy-five.”

“And?”

“He ties into the Patterson thing. Tallent, as well. I’ve written it all up. Everything I know. Even more that I don’t.”

“Why would you do that, Kevin?”

“Just wanted to get it down on paper. I e-mailed a copy to you at the newsroom. Don’t trust anyone on it. Especially the D.A.’s office.”

“Your girlfriend
works
for the D.A.”

“Just keep it to yourself.”

“Where are you, Kev?”

“In my car. In front of my apartment.” He looked out his windshield at Finn McDermott’s building, stuck on an ugly corner a half block from Brighton Center.

“You been to bed?”

“I caught a couple of hours.”

“What’s going on? And why should I care about Curtis Jordan?”

“Read what I wrote. Then we’ll talk.”

“Let’s talk now.”

“Later, Mo.”

“You’re scaring me a little.”

“Go back to bed. I’ll call you.”

He cut the line and turned off his phone. A bird jumped on a wire. A rat hopped out from behind a Dumpster and scooted across an alley. Kevin checked the snub-nosed for the third time to make sure it was loaded and thought about Finn in Tar Park, touching Kevin’s shoulder, offering condolences about his grandmother. He stuffed the gun in his pocket and reached for the door handle.

The lobby of Finn’s building smelled like Fidelis. Seemed about right. Kevin walked up a flight of stairs and knocked lightly on the door to 2B. The hair on his arms lifted as the door swung open. Kevin took out the gun.

“Finn. Hey, you here?” His voice rang off the flat walls and boomed and echoed in his ears. He walked through the living room, taking note of a framed picture of Bobby Orr flying through the air as the B’s won the Cup. Beside it was a photo of Finn standing outside Fenway with Luis Tiant. They both had cigars stuck in their mouths. A coffee table was littered with empty beer bottles. Nearby two full ones were taking a bath in a cooler full of half-melted ice. Kevin sat on a stool in the kitchen and stared at his gun on the counter, listening to his blood cool and thinking about a twenty-two pressed to the forehead of a dead man, the pop it made and the way the smallest of sounds can echo up and down the corridors of a person’s life. He stuffed the snub-nosed back in his pocket and walked down the hall to Finn’s bedroom. His sheets were in a tumble and there was a blue condom wrapper crumpled on the floor. The rest of the room was curtained in shadow. Kevin was turning to leave when he heard a soft thump. He crossed over to the room’s only window. It let out onto a fire escape that overlooked an alley of blank brick walls. Finn hadn’t left town. At least not in the conventional sense. He was on the fire escape, hanging from a rope by the neck, staring blindly through a black tangle of iron at eternity and beyond. Outside a siren whooped once and a police car rolled up to the mouth of the alley, sealing off the exit. Kevin took a final look at Finn’s bare feet, spinning slowly in the pink and blue light. Then he turned and ran.

Today was her tenth birthday. No one had gotten her a cake. No one sent her a card. And that was just how she wanted it. Bridget sat in her bedroom, listening to the slop of soap and water coming from the bathroom, bright bubbles of laughter floating and popping all around her. She waited for the noise to subside before lazing across the hall and stopping in the doorway. Colleen sat in the tub, seven years old, giggling and unashamed of her nakedness. A breeze blew in through an open door, furrowing the milky green water and carrying the smell of smoke. Mom was out on the back porch, sneaking an afternoon cig. Bridget swung the bathroom door closed and knelt by the tub. Colleen grabbed for a rubber boat floating just out of reach. Bridget pushed it back to her. Colleen ducked the boat under the water and laughed as it resurfaced. Bridget played with a lock of her sister’s hair, then slipped her fingers around the back of her neck, jamming her under the water until her forehead scraped bottom. At first Colleen thought it was some sort of game. Stupid Colleen. Then she realized it wasn’t and tried to fight back, squirming and sliding along the bottom of the tub before slipping out of Bridget’s soapy grip and managing a single, suds-filled scream. Footsteps pounded down the hall and their mother was there, filling
the doorway, staring at Bridget, who was sitting on the toilet as Colleen wailed. Maybe she was afraid to ask. Maybe she was just ashamed. Shame had always been Mom’s strong suit. Either way, nothing was ever said. Nothing done. Until the day they decided to teach Bridget a lesson.

She tugged a comb through her hair, watching in the mirror as the teeth dug straight rows across her scalp. The bedroom was achingly hot. She walked over to a window and cracked it, letting the fresh air wash over her face, inhaling it in tiny sips. A full-length mirror hung on the back of her closet door. Bridget took off her clothes piece by piece until she was naked in front of the glass. The puckered scar ran in a thick diagonal across her back, from left shoulder to right hip. Bridget twisted in the mirror and traced it with her eye. They’d burned her that winter—the winter of her tenth year—with a pot of hot coffee. She remembered it, black and scalding, a waterfall of pain that beat her to the floor where she curled up in a ball and screamed inside her head, never offering more than a mutter for public consumption. Her mother had pulled the nightgown off her back, taking sheets of flesh with it. Her father loomed in the background, eyes sweating and staring until she looked at him and he turned away. Someone found a stick of soft butter to rub across her back, already cooked with blisters. Bridget just lay there, withered like a stillborn rotting away in an old woman’s womb. She’d done it on purpose. Her mother. Bridget was certain of it. As for her father, he was there for the pain. And any morsel would do. Flesh and limb. Even one’s own child. Bridget knew. Her brain was tuned to the same radio station that had played nonstop inside her father’s head so of course she knew. And even understood.

She pulled a silk shirt she’d bought at Filene’s off a hanger. The blouse was followed by a pair of black linen pants and flats. Up on the shelf of the closet was her old copy of
Gray’s Anatomy
. The diagrams in it were covered with pencil mark slashes and childhood doodles. Bridget ran her fingers across a few of the creased pages, closed the book, and hid it at the back of the closet. She sat down again in front of the dresser mirror, piling up her hair with her hands, then holding up a pair of teardrop earrings, turning this way and that to see how they splashed in the light. It was her time now. Hers and Bobby’s. They’d live here, in the house on Champney. Take over the first two floors and rent out the top. Or maybe they’d just keep the entire place for themselves. Bobby would have to disappear for a while. There wasn’t much way around that. Or was there? The truth was anything could be arranged. At the end of the day, all you needed was a plan and the stomach for it. Bridget put on the earrings and stood up, giving her clothes a final brush in the mirror. Then she left the stifling space of her room, hurrying out of the apartment and up the back stairs to her appointment on the roof.

KEVIN HOPPED
a fence that ran behind Finn’s building. He could feel the police all around him and knew he had to keep moving. Three fences and two alleys later, he surfaced on Sparhawk Street. A couple of schoolgirls gave him a hard look that told him he didn’t belong on this block and they sure as fuck knew it. Kevin kept walking until he’d circled back to his car. He slid behind the wheel and watched in the rearview mirror as a cop rerouted early morning traffic in front of Finn’s place. A black sedan bumped over the curb and onto the sidewalk. Frank DeMateo jumped out from behind the wheel. Lisa slipped out of the passenger’s side. She had sunglasses scooted up on her forehead and dropped them over her eyes as she scanned the block. Kevin pulled into the stream of cars. In his mirror, Lisa walked up the steps and disappeared inside.

She trailed DeMateo up the stairs, then hung back and watched as he ordered people around. Lisa had been surprised when her boss asked her to tag along. Maybe it was a going-away present.
Maybe he was trying to cover his ass if things went sideways. Finn McDermott had always been on the periphery of the investigation. Now he stood front and center—either as a killer who took his own life or yet another victim. DeMateo disappeared into the apartment’s bedroom for a few minutes, then came out again. He motioned for her to move into the hallway. They found a quiet spot near the stairwell.

“They just cut him down,” DeMateo said. He looked nervous. Lisa’s instincts told her the less she said, the better.

“And?”

“Who knows? Could be suicide. Could be he was drugged and hoisted up there. Could be he was already dead when someone put a rope around his neck. Toxicology should help.”

“Do they have a time of death?”

“Six to eight hours ago. I’ve got a woman downstairs says she saw a man leaving the apartment last night. We’re gonna show her Scales’s picture.”

“You want me to handle that?”

“I’ll do it. You stay here and keep an eye on things. The fucking press hasn’t put this together yet, but it’s just a matter of time.”

DeMateo disappeared down the stairs, cell phone stuck to his ear. Lisa wandered back to the doorway and looked in. She counted three uniforms, a couple of plainclothes detectives, the coroner’s people running in and out, and a forensics team. Everyone was doing their job. No one was giving her a second look. For the third time that morning she punched in Kevin’s number and, for the third time, got his voice mail. Lisa slid the phone back in her pocket and thought about the dead man in the next
room.
And the very real possibility she might go to jail for it.
A young black detective named Floyd McKinnon yelled her name and walked out of the bathroom holding a thirty-eight-caliber revolver by the trigger guard. McKinnon told her they’d found it secured to the underside of the tub. And they weren’t done. Lisa felt her heart turn over as she took a quick look at the gun, noting the gray tape on the grip. She ordered McKinnon to bag it and walked into the bathroom just as one of the detectives pried up a couple of loose floorboards. Lisa pulled out a flashlight and knelt by the hole in the floor.

“What do we got?”

The detective crouched over the hole was a Dorchester guy named Billy Neelon. She’d worked with him before and knew he liked to take his time with a crime scene. Usually Lisa was fine with that. Not this morning.

“Let me get a few more shots before you move it,” Neelon said.

“How many have you taken?”

“Maybe a half dozen.”

“Two minutes.”

Lisa watched while Neelon snapped away. Jammed into the bottom of the hole was a black Nike backpack. When he was done, she reached in with a gloved hand and pulled it out, taking a quick look to make sure there was nothing else in the hole. She opened the pack in the living room. Neelon moved around the table, snapping pictures as she worked. Another detective videotaped the scene, while a third took notes. The first thing Lisa found was a maroon-and-gold BC sweatshirt. There were smears of dried blood on the front and two cruel slashes
in the side. Underneath the sweatshirt was a women’s powder blue scarf and a winter hat. At the very bottom of the pack, she found a small leather change purse. Inside it were the driver’s licenses of Sandra Patterson, Rosie Tallent, and Christine Flannery. Lisa took out her cell again and punched in her boss’s number.