The Boyfriend (19 page)

He looked up again. He was two thousand meters west of City Hall. He had a perfect view above the city and along the narrow corridor of the backs of buildings, all the way to City Hall. His building was on high ground near Beacon Hill, which was ninety-two feet above sea level. City Hall was only about fifteen feet above sea level. He sat down, closed his eyes, and mentally rehearsed everything he was going to do. Nothing would happen until Salazar’s limo arrived.

Till had wasted much of his night driving around Boston searching for the white Toyota Camry. He had stayed out until the news at seven a.m. announced that a young woman had been found dead in a field south of Boston. The description was clearly that of Kelly.

The only train of thought that seemed plausible was to return to the speculation that the Boyfriend was doing something else besides killing hookers. And judging from his behavior and talents, there was only one really likely thing he could be doing.

Till used his cell phone and dialed the number of Detective Alan Rafferty. He listened to the ringing sound for a few seconds, and then heard a sound like a door opening. “Vice, Rafferty.”

Till said, “Detective Rafferty, my name is Jack Till. Ted McCann in Los Angeles gave me your number.”

“Yeah, he called me and said you might be getting in touch.”

“Did he tell you anything about my case?”

“Some. He said you were trying to hunt down a guy who had been killing and robbing redhead escorts. Is that right?”

“Yes. The parents of the one who was killed in LA hired me. When I checked with Ted to find out if this was a onetime thing or a pattern, he had a list of five in other cities who fit our girl’s description and had been shot with a nine-millimeter pistol.”

“You’re calling about the one here last night. Joelle Moody.”

“Uh, I thought her name was Kelly Allen.”

“Yeah, that was her work name. Same girl. Long reddish hair, shot in the head with a nine-millimeter pistol.”

“The shooter was the man I’ve been following across the country. When I realized he was living with Kelly Allen in Woburn, I tried to warn her. I went to her apartment, and showed her the pictures of the seven murdered girls. They all looked a lot like her. They all had strawberry blond hair. Three of them had been wearing the same custom-made necklace in their online ads that she’d worn. I thought I’d persuaded her to run, but then he drove up, and she ran to join him. Now she’s dead.”

“If she ran to him and joined him, why kill her?”

“That’s part of what I’ve figured out. What the girl does or doesn’t do doesn’t matter. He always kills them, and then leaves town. I thought at first it was a compulsion, that he was one of those guys who get so disgusted with themselves for going to a prostitute that the girl has to be eliminated along with the sin. Then I thought he was so bat-shit crazy that he got off on killing them. But now I think it’s a policy. I think he kills them to keep them from talking about him.”

“What’s he doing that they could talk about?”

“I’ve tried looking at all the dates when girls were killed. I checked the papers in the cities where they died to see what else made the news in the next day or two. The only things I’ve found are high-profile murders, each one done right before the girl dies. I think he might be a contract killer.”

“If he’s a pro, and he knows from the start that he’s going to have to kill the girl before he leaves town, why does he want them to begin with?”

“At first I assumed his main interest in the girls was stealing their money. That’s got to be fairly profitable, since they’re all pretty enough to make a lot of money over time. And they’re not likely to put much of the money in a bank, where it would be reported to the IRS. So he takes the money. That makes it look to the police like the killing is a by-product of the robbery. It isn’t. He kills them because they know who he is, when he got to town, and how long he’s been around.”

“I’m not sure about this.”

“I’ve been tracking him. Whenever he comes into a new town, he almost immediately hooks up with one of these girls, and moves in with her. That means during the month or two it takes to prepare for his contract killing, he doesn’t need a hotel, has no need to use credit cards, no need to fill out a rental agreement. He’s got the cash he stole from the last girl, so he deals only in cash. If he wants to keep his car out of sight, he can leave it in a garage and use her car. Most escorts use false names and move from town to town, so not only does nobody know him, they don’t really even know her. If, when he leaves, the girl is dead, nobody in town knows he even exists. He cleans the apartment, and tries to remove all prints. If he left fingerprints, they’re in a room that’s been visited by a hundred other men a month.”

“Okay, suppose that’s all true,” Rafferty said. “What’s going on today? What’s he doing now—running?”

“If he killed Kelly prematurely, before he did his hit, then I’d say he’s getting ready to do it now,” said Till. “I want you to help me stop him.”

“How?”

“You must have people in the department you can talk to. Get any inside info you can on anybody that’s a good target for the next day or two. Some gangster in this part of the country is going on trial, or some company is about to enter a bidding war, or a rich family is having a wedding. Whatever. We’ve got to concentrate on anything that’s only going to happen once.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Can I give you my phone number?”

“McCann gave it to me already. Just keep your phone on.”

Till read newspapers, read local magazines, and signed onto Web sites that purported to have detailed calendars of events for the Boston area. He thought,
We are looking for a victim who may be vulnerable for today only. Or a victim who is about to do something
—perform or testify or abscond or deliver. If it’s a secret, or the person isn’t well-known, we won’t find it.

As Till searched, he found so many possibilities that the task seemed impossible. David Farraday was filming a modern version of
Charley’s Aunt
at Dunster House with exteriors in Harvard Yard. Apparently Farraday was an up-and-coming actor. Till saved the article. He could easily imagine a creep asking a movie company for a payoff or he’d kill some movie star, but he couldn’t imagine the creep hiring a professional hit man to kill the star if the company didn’t pay.

He saw an article about Nobel Prize winners who were or had been at MIT. He went online to see how many of them were living, and he was astounded. The answer was nine faculty members, nine former faculty members, five emeritus faculty members, one student, fourteen former staff members, and twenty alumni. He knew there was some remote possibility that somebody would want to kill a Nobelist. But if that was going on, the victim was as good as dead. Unless they were all going to be at a party today, Till couldn’t find a way to protect the intended target.

There were two well-known rock bands and a solo female singer appearing in Boston this evening. He noted the locations and kept searching.

The time was going by. He could see it always on the upper right of his computer screen as he searched. He wondered if he should be using the time to persuade some deputy chief in the Boston Police Department that a full-scale alert should be declared. Just having more cops on the street might not help, but it wouldn’t hurt, either.

He searched for the heads of various companies in the Boston area. A few of them had controversial histories or products. He saved the ones accused of some environmental crime. There were extremist groups who might raise hell, but so far none had ever hired a shooter. The executives who had ordered big layoffs or were flamboyant about their riches he saved too, but he didn’t have much confidence. The way to get to their money was kidnapping or extortion, not murder.

After a half hour he got to the one he had been expecting at the beginning. It was Joseph A. Peccorino, who was reputed to be the current head of the Mafia in Boston. He was a great candidate, but he had been under surveillance for years. On the days when he wasn’t being questioned, arrested, or brought to court, he was probably surrounded by FBI agents who were trying to eavesdrop on him. There wasn’t much Till could do that wasn’t already being done.

Till tried politicians, starting with the mayor because he was based in Boston rather than in Washington. He found that an announcement had been posted only five minutes ago. This afternoon Mayor William Meisterberg would be at a press conference to welcome a Mexican federal prosecutor, Luis Salazar, for a joint discussion of the paths of drug trafficking into the northeastern United States.

He closed the laptop and headed out of the hotel room, reaching for his cell phone. The visit of the Mexican federal prosecutor might not be the right event, but it was the only one he’d found that included a man a lot of people would pay to see dead. Till figured he might as well wait at City Hall Plaza for whatever Rafferty found out.

By the time Till got to his rental car, he had begun to believe that the Mexican prosecutor Luis Salazar was the victim. Salazar was probably under much less protection in the United States than he would be in Mexico. There were plenty of homicidal men in Mexico who would love to see a man like him dead. Probably most of them would not be confident about doing a killing in Boston, but they would have plenty of money to pay an American contract killer to do it for them.

He began to drive, and he redialed Rafferty’s number.

“Rafferty.”

“This is Till. Have you heard about the Mexican prosecutor?”

“Just now. Apparently they were keeping it quiet until it would be too late for his enemies to get here and try anything. He’s just meeting with a few high-level cops here, and the security will be heavy. I was about to call and tell you.”

“Did you turn up anything that seemed as likely?” asked Till.

“I turned up nothing else that seemed at all likely.”

“Me either. I’m on my way there now. You might want to tell somebody in the department what we think is happening.”

“I just did. That’s what took me so long.”

“Good. I’ll talk to you soon.”

It was already after two-thirty. Till drove toward City Hall, slightly faster and more aggressively than the rest of the cars, like a taxi driver in a hurry. He weaved from lane to lane when the cars began to bunch up ahead of him. He had the car radio on to listen to the news, but what he was listening for was word that he was too late.

Till glanced at the clock on the dashboard display. It was quarter to three. He wished he knew more about the Boyfriend’s past jobs. The Boyfriend always seemed to shoot his girls in the back of the head. Since there were quieter, safer ways for a young, strong man to kill a 120-pound girl, he was apparently most comfortable with a pistol. Till had to rely on the little he knew. In all of the killings that could be reliably ascribed to the Boyfriend, his weapon had been a semiautomatic pistol that fired a nine-by-nineteen-millimeter round.

If the Boyfriend stayed true to the little that Till knew about him, he would be carrying the nine-millimeter pistol again today. He would have to be very close to the target to be sure of a kill. A Mexican prosecutor appearing on a public street would probably be wearing a bulletproof vest. That meant the Boyfriend had to try for a head shot. He would have to emerge from the crowd close to the prosecutor, shoot him in the head, and slip away.

It was going to be difficult and complicated. There would be dignitaries: the mayor and city council, all of them in suits. There would be Mexican state secret servicemen to protect the prosecutor, and they would be dressed in suits too. So the Boyfriend would wear a suit, and move in close. He might even attach himself to one of the locally recognizable politicians—probably not the mayor, but the council president, even the police commissioner. He could shoot the prosecutor, probably from behind, since that was his favorite angle; grab his chosen dignitary; and drag him away from the supposed line of fire. Considering the number of cops likely to be there today and the likelihood of armed Mexican bodyguards, a line of fire was sure to develop or be perceived to develop. He could drag his dignitary all the way to safety inside City Hall, then abandon him and go out another door.

Till knew so little that he clung to the few things he could surmise. There was no way even an experienced pistol shooter would want to be farther than twenty-five or thirty feet from his target, and if he was that close, the only way out would be to impersonate one of the good guys. Till now had a rough notion of what he would look for. He came to a public parking lot, swung his rental car into the lot, paid the fee in advance, then hurried toward the big redbrick cube that was City Hall.

There were steps on one side of the building, but the redbrick plaza sloped up from the street. He could see there was a wooden lectern set up just beside the entrance to City Hall. On the street were two vans from local television stations with their transmission booms extended into the air. He could see a very slight Asian woman in a tan suit standing in front of the building with a microphone. She was looking at her cameraman, who rested a large video camera on his shoulder. She moved a little bit to put the lectern with the seal of the City of Boston on it into the background of her shot.

There were sawhorse barricades to keep the entrance to the plaza clear, but so far only five police officers were visible on the plaza. Two were near the lectern and the entrance to City Hall, and the other three appeared to be wandering, but weren’t. Each had taken a side on the perimeter of the plaza. There were no crowds forming, and that looked like good news to Till: with no crowd, it would be harder for the killer to hide. A foreign prosecutor was hardly a celebrity in a big American city, so most people came and went without appearing to feel curiosity about the proceedings. Those who stared at all seemed to be curious only about the television vans. A couple of them stopped a few yards from the small woman in the tan suit and watched her doing sound checks.