Next of Kin (13 page)

‘We could do this down at the police station,’ Long said.

‘That’s fine,’ McDougal said. ‘You just call my lawyer any time you want me. I’ll come running.’ He reached into a drawer and pulled out a business card.
‘His number’s right there on the front. One of the best in the city. He’ll have me out of the police station in a matter of minutes.’

Long looked at the card and frowned. It was heavy card stock with embossed lettering that read
Law Offices of Scott T. Finn
. Long felt like he might throw up.

‘Something wrong?’ McDougal asked.

‘I’ll be in touch, Mr McDougal,’ Long said, standing. He walked to the door. When he got there, he turned. ‘One last question, Mr McDougal: What did you and Ms Connor
talk about when she called?’

‘Go fuck yourself,’ McDougal replied.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

‘There has to be more to this,’ Finn said. He and Kozlowski were back at the office in Charlestown. Finn was sitting behind his desk, staring into the computer
screen, running searches for any public information regarding Elizabeth Connor. There were over a thousand women in the United States with the name, and most of the other nine hundred and
ninety-nine seemed to have led more interesting lives than the one who was murdered in Roxbury.

‘Why?’ Kozlowski asked.

‘Because,’ Finn said. ‘People don’t just get murdered.’

‘Yeah, they do,’ Kozlowski replied. ‘After baseball, murder is America’s favorite
pastime. People “just” get murdered all the time.’

‘Not my mother.’

Kozlowski grunted. ‘Listen to yourself,’ he said. ‘You’re talking like you knew her. Like you have any idea who she was.’

‘She was my mother,’ Finn said. ‘I must know her at some level, right? Even if it’s buried. Isn’t that the way this is supposed to work?’

‘Only in Hollywood. This look like Hollywood?’

Finn said, ‘There’s got to be something we’re missing.’

Kozlowski shook his head. ‘There isn’t. At least, there’s nothing you’re gonna find on the Internet. I’ve got access to search engines that blow anything
you’ve got working on Google or Yahoo. I ran her name through all of them, culled through the results, limited what I had to what was relevant to this particular Elizabeth Connor. Know what I
came up with? Nothing. A big fat goose egg. You’re not gonna do any better tapping away on your computer, trust me.’

Finn pushed his chair away from the desk in frustration. ‘What do you expect me to do?’ he demanded. ‘You expect me to just give up?’

Kozlowski shook his head. ‘Not in your nature.’

‘What, then?’

‘Start in the past,’ Kozlowski said. ‘And start with what made her different.’

‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

‘From everything we’ve learned, only two interesting things happened in Elizabeth Connor’s life: she was murdered, and she gave up a child for adoption forty-four years ago. We
haven’t had any luck finding out anything about her from her murder, so start at the other end and find out whatever you can about the adoption.’

‘From who?’ Finn demanded.

‘For starters, from the adoption agency and the place where you were born. It’s up in New Hampshire, right?’

‘Yeah,’ Finn said. ‘A couple of hours north.’

‘So, go there. Start asking questions,’ Kozlowski said.

Finn considered the suggestion. ‘I’ve got to pick up Sally from school at two-thirty today. Then I’d have to figure out what to do with her while I go up there.’

‘Take her with you,’ Kozlowski suggested. ‘It’d be a nice little father-daughter bonding experience.’

‘She’s not my daughter,’ Finn said.

‘She’s more your daughter than Elizabeth Connor was your mother. Besides, you’ll seem a lot less intimidating if you’ve got a daughter with you when you get there.
It’ll be a lot easier to get information that way.’

Finn shook his head. ‘I don’t want to get her involved.’

‘She’s involved already,’ Kozlowski said. ‘She’s a part of your life; this is your life.’

‘She shouldn’t have to deal with this kind of crap,’ Finn said. ‘She’s dealt with worse,’ Kozlowski said. ‘A lot worse.’

Kevin McDougal’s duplex apartment was on L Street in South Boston, looking out on Pleasure Bay, toward Castle Island. Across Boston Harbor, airplanes approached Logan
Airport parallel to the horizon on the narrow peninsula jutting out from East Boston. Eamonn McDougal had his driver pull the car up to the building. He took out his key and slid it into the front
door, letting himself in.

His son’s apartment took up the second and third floors. Eamonn had paid for it a year before. Now, he wondered whether he’d done the right thing. He’d never demanded enough
from his son; he’d allowed the boy’s mother to coddle him in a manner that would have been unthinkable when Eamonn was young.

He slid a second key into the apartment lock, turned the knob and opened the door.

The first thing that hit him was the smell. It was the sweet, sharp, synthetic odor of burnt chemicals. He recognized the stench, and understood what it meant. The fury grew in his chest as he
stepped into the apartment.

There were five of them sprawled out on the endless Corinthian leather sectional for which he’d paid top dollar. His wife had said she didn’t want their son living without the best
that money could buy. Sal D’Ario, nicknamed ‘Dorito’, and Peter Alred, the two idiots Kevin McDougal considered his ‘crew’, were fully reclined at either end of the
couch. Dorito’s eyes were partially closed, rolled up into his head. Alred was staring at the television, which was playing a cartoon about a bright yellow talking sponge. There were two
women – girls, really – sitting between them on the couch. Whores, no doubt, from the way they were dressed, though Eamonn knew that fashion had gone in such a radical direction that it
was now often hard for him to tell. They both seemed to be sleeping.

His son was in the middle of the couch, his shirt unbuttoned, bare chest showing, staring idly up at the ceiling. On the coffee table in front of him a bent spoon balanced precariously on the
edge of a glass. A butane lighter lay on its side next to the glass, and a dozen small vials of brown powder were lined up in the center next to a length of rubber tubing and two hypodermic
needles. Three empty vials were overturned on the floor next to the table.

Alred was the first to notice Eamonn standing before them. ‘Oh, fuck,’ he said, struggling to sit up. ‘Fuck, Kev.’ He stood unsteadily, knocking into the coffee table,
spilling the remaining vials onto the floor. ‘Mr McDougal,’ he stammered as he bent down to pick up the vials, chasing them around the hardwood floor with his fingers as they skidded
and eluded his grasp. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said over and over. ‘I’m sorry.’

Eamonn ignored him, keeping his focus on his son. ‘Kevin,’ he said, ‘tell these people to leave.’

His son looked at him, and it took a moment for the gravity of the situation to register. He stood up and pulled his shirt closed in front of his chest. ‘Dad,’ he said quietly.
‘I didn’t know you were coming. I’m staying in the apartment; I’m doing what you told me to.’ At least he wasn’t shaking, Eamonn thought. He wondered whether the
drugs were lending him courage.

‘Tell them to leave. Now.’

Dorito and the two girls were awake now, and they were looking nervously back and forth between Eamonn and Kevin, unsure what to do. Alred was still on his knees, scooping up the drug
paraphernalia.

Kevin walked around the coffee table, toward his father. ‘It’s . . . it’s okay,’ he babbled, his confidence waning. He didn’t even come up to Eamonn’s chin,
and though he was well muscled, it was all fake. It wasn’t the hard, lean build that came from real work; it was the round, puffy muscle that came from leisure time at the gym. Everything
about the boy was for show: the car, the clothes, the tattoos, all of it. All carefully cultivated in the hope that people would overlook the fact that he was a squirt of a child, quite literally
half the man his father was. For just a moment, Eamonn thought he was going to be sick at the sight of him. ‘I swear,’ Kevin was repeating, ‘I’m doing what you told me
to.’

Eamonn waited as his son approached him until he was just within range. Then without warning, and with the speed and force of a man half his age, he swung his fist in a solid arc into his
son’s face. He was surprised at the satisfaction he took from the boy’s shocked expression. He didn’t go down, but he staggered to his right, off balance, his hand going to his
bleeding lips, his eyes spinning.

The others in the room were still and silent, their mouths agape. Eamonn ignored them and chased the visceral pleasure that had come with the first punch. He took two steps toward Kevin and
grabbed him by the shirt, spinning him around. With the boy so far off balance, it was easy to generate momentum, and Eamonn gave a heavy shove as he let go of him, sending him headlong into the
glass shelving along the wall. The whole apartment seemed to shatter, and Kevin crumpled to the floor. Eamonn’s wife had paid over a thousand dollars for the shelves that now lay in shards on
top of her son. For the first time, Eamonn felt they were worth every penny. He wasn’t done yet, though.

He stepped through the glass, grabbed his son by the shirt and hauled him up onto his feet. The boy was bleeding, but not badly enough to be in any imminent danger, and not enough to douse
Eamonn’s anger.

Holding his son’s face close to his own, Eamonn yelled, ‘I’m not going to say it again! Tell these people to leave!’

Kevin was too incapacitated to say anything, but it no longer mattered. The room was immediately thrown into motion. The two girls were on their feet, tripping as they fled to the front door.
Dorito and Alred were right behind them, grabbing armfuls of their belongings, not bothering to pull on their shoes and jackets. No one said a word – not to Eamonn, not to Kevin. Within a
matter of seconds the door slammed behind them and the apartment was still.

Eamonn was still holding his son dangling helplessly in front of him. All at once he felt tired, and he let the boy slide to the ground. He walked over to the kitchen and pulled a beer out of
the refrigerator, twisted the cap off and took a long drink. There was a dishrag on the counter and he picked it up, ran cold water over it in the sink. Reaching into the freezer, he pulled out
some ice, wrapped it in the wet dishtowel, and tied off the end. Her picked his beer back up and walked out into the living room.

Kevin was still lying on the floor, looking up at him. ‘Get up,’ Eamonn said.

His son didn’t move. ‘Do as I say, boy,’ Eamonn said, throwing the ice pack at him. ‘Don’t make me angry again.’

Kevin struggled to his feet and made his way over to the sofa, holding the ice to his lips.

‘I need you clear headed now,’ Eamonn said. ‘I catch you with any of this kind of shit again, and I won’t have a son anymore. Do you understand?’

‘I understand,’ Kevin mumbled through the ice.

‘Good.’ Eamonn sat in a chair across the coffee table from his son. ‘The police came to talk to me. They wanted to know about a woman who worked for me. She was
murdered.’

Kevin stared at his father. ‘Is that bad?’

‘There’s good and bad in everything,’ Eamonn said. ‘It’s all in how you look at it, and what you’re willing to do with it.’

The boy said nothing, and it was clear to Eamonn that he didn’t understand. At least he was learning to keep his mouth shut; Eamonn supposed that was the best he could hope for at the
moment.

‘I may have some work for you to do, boy,’ Eamonn said. ‘You keep your head clear and your mind on what you’re doing, I may just be able to keep you out of jail. You
think you can do what you’re told?’

Kevin took the ice pack away from his lips and examined it. The blood had soaked through the dish towel, turning it a deep, dark crimson. He looked up at his father and nodded.

‘Good,’ Eamonn said. He finished the rest of the beer in one swallow. ‘Maybe we can turn this fuckin’ mess to our advantage.’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Long slammed open the door to the brownstone office building in Charlestown. The doorknob hit the brick wall in the entryway hard enough that he wondered whether the glass
would shatter. He didn’t care if it did; breaking a door might make him feel better. For the first time in months the booze hadn’t. He’d downed half a bottle of vodka to settle
his mood after his meeting with McDougal. But rather than settling him, as it usually did, it had thrown his equilibrium off. He was determined that his inebriation wouldn’t stop him from
getting answers from McDougal’s lawyer, though.

A young black man holding an infant poked his head around the corner from the office. ‘Excuse me, can I help you?’ he demanded angrily.

‘Who are you?’ Long demanded back.

‘I’m Reggie,’ the man replied. ‘Who are you?’

Long wondered whether he had burst into the wrong building. ‘I’m looking for Finn,’ he said.

‘He isn’t here,’ Reggie said. The man’s attitude was obdurate. ‘Can I give him a message? What do you want with him?’ He stood there with the child on his
hip, looking defiant.

Long pulled out his badge, held it up. ‘None of your goddamned business,’ he said.

The badge didn’t seem to intimidate the man, who simply squared his shoulders, as if to block Long from passing. ‘Lissa,’ he called over his shoulder, back into the office,
‘you may want to come out here.’ Reggie’s eyes never left Long’s, and Long was tempted to escalate the confrontation. He was in no mood to be challenged. He wasn’t
sure what he’d do with the child if he tried to frisk the man, though, so he stood there, a feeling of inebriated impotence growing within him.

A moment later a woman came around the corner. She looked at Long, noting the badge he still held aloft. ‘Officer,’ she said with a hint of steel.

‘Detective,’ Long corrected her. ‘Detective Long.’

She nodded. ‘Detective. I’m Lissa Krantz, Mr Finn’s associate. Can I help you?’

‘I’m looking for Finn,’ he said. He could feel himself sway ever so slightly.

‘As Reggie just said, he’s not here right now,’ she said calmly. ‘Can I give him a message when he gets back?’