The Dead Room (21 page)

46

Walpole’s MCI-Cedar Junction, one of the state’s two ‘supermax’ high-security prisons for adult male offenders, had a strict dress code for female visitors. No tank, halter or tube tops. No sleeveless shirts. No jogging suits or gym clothing. No clothing made of Spandex. No sheer or see-through material. Trousers had to be free of holes and rips and couldn’t contain any open pockets like those found on cargo trousers. Skirts and shorts measuring less than four inches from the kneecap were deemed too revealing and not allowed – no clothing of any type that exposed a woman’s midriff or back was allowed, no exceptions.

Darby placed her tactical belt, keys, wallet, badge and phone in a small plastic dish. After checking her sidearm, she raised her hands. A female guard, a heavy-set black woman, waved a metal-detecting wand over her body.

A young male guard somewhere in his late twenties, Darby guessed, wearing a short-sleeved shirt stood next to a metal door. He stared at the raw cuts and crisscrossed rows of stitches on the right side of her swollen face. Lieutenant Warner had driven her to her condo and stayed in the car while she went upstairs to shower. She dressed quickly, grabbing things from her closet. She realized she had forgotten a belt and pulled the canvas tactical belt from her chest-of-drawers. Not wanting to waste any more time, she had decided to forgo the lengthy process of trying to bandage her face.

‘You wearing an underwired bra?’ the female guard asked.

‘No,’ Darby said. ‘And you’ll be happy to know I remembered not to wear my crotchless underwear this morning.’

The woman let loose a dry chuckle. The male guard didn’t crack a smile, too busy working hard on his
mess with me and you will pay
expression. The way his biceps bulged like rocks underneath his tanned skin made her think of Coop. She had tried calling him from the road, calling his mobile and his direct number at the lab, but kept getting his voicemail.

‘Well,’ the woman said, placing the wand on the table, ‘I’m glad to see you took the time to read the dress code. Most people don’t even bother. The women visitors, they are the
worst.
They strut on in here wearing short-shorts or some low-cut skirt without any panties, then get all belligerent when we tell ’em, ah, sorry,
ma’am
, but you can’t come in here with your junk all exposed. Need to put on something just a
little
bit more formal.’

The woman slapped on a pair of latex gloves and said, ‘Please raise your hands again for me, Dr McCormick, I’ve got to search your pockets.’

Darby wanted to keep the conversation going, needing some distance from the thoughts scrabbling through her pounding head (Christ, did it hurt). ‘My personal favourite was the one about no bathing suits.’

‘We had to add that one, oh, I’d say about three years ago. This woman who worked at a strip club? She decided to visit her boyfriend right after her shift, came waltzing in here in five-inch stilettos and her ta-tas practically hanging out of her bikini top. The stories I could tell you.

‘You all set, Dr McCormick. Your sidearm and your wallet will be waiting for you with me behind this desk when you come out.’

‘Thank you.’ Darby picked up the scuffed leather pad sitting on top of the X-ray machine. ‘Can I take this in with me? I may need to take notes.’

‘Let me see it.’

The woman searched through the computer-printed sheets the superintendant had given her on John Ezekiel. Then she examined the leather compartments and folds. She uncapped Darby’s pen, a black plastic Pilot roller-ball with a metal tip.

‘You got any other pens on you?’

‘Just that one,’ Darby said.

‘Okay, you can take it in. But make sure you come back with it. I don’t want to have to do a strip search on that man in there. Don’t want to end my day on that note, you hear?’

Darby nodded, glancing at a colour video screen showing a private conference room of bright white tiles. In the centre, a gun-metal grey table and chair bolted to the floor. The other chair was not.

‘We’ll be looking in and watching, but we can’t hear a thing,’ the woman said. ‘When they bring Mr Ezekiel in, they’ll shackle him to the chair bolted to the floor, so you don’t have to worry about any surprises – unless he suddenly turns into the Incredible Hulk.’ She laughed at her joke. ‘When you done speaking to him, just turn to the camera and wave. Or you can come up to the door and give it a good, hard knock. Billy Biceps over there will let you in and out.’

The woman grabbed her chest mike. ‘We all set, Patrick. Bring him on in.’

The young male guard moved to the steel door.

Darby watched the second hand crawling on the wall clock.

Almost two minutes later a buzzer sounded. Locks clicked back.

The male guard opened the door.

Darby felt her heart climb high in her chest, the feeling similar to the one she’d experienced when abseiling down a ripcord from a chopper during a SWAT exercise. Legs steady, she moved past the guard and entered the conference room.

John Ezekiel no longer bore any resemblance to the mental snapshot she carried. His thick blond hair had that odd yellow tint she’d seen in heavy smokers. His muscles had wasted away and his pale skin seemed almost translucent underneath the hum of the overhead fluorescent lighting.

‘Good morning, Dr McCormick.’

She had imagined a deeper voice. Ezekiel’s voice, light and airy, reminded her of the pleasant and eager front desk clerk at a hotel.

The buzzer went off again. The electronic locks slammed home and Darby felt the sound echo inside her chest.

She approached the table.

‘How do you know I’m a doctor?’

‘I’ve been keeping tabs on you ever since I read about you in the newspapers,’ he said. ‘You’re in the papers a lot. And on TV. You’re a special investigator for Boston’s Criminal Services Unit. Your specialty is forensics and deviant behaviour of the criminal variety. In other words, people like me.’

Darby pulled out a chair and sat. Ezekiel stared at her from the other side of the table. He had the dull, lifeless eyes of a marble bust.

Must be the medication
, Darby thought. Ezekiel suffered from schizoaffective disorder – the depressive type, the most difficult to treat. According to the notes, his current medications consisted of the antipsychotic drug Clozaril and lithium, a mood stabilizer.

‘I was told you wanted to speak to me about Amy Hallcox.’

‘You mean Kendra Sheppard,’ he said.

‘Who’s that?’

‘You know who she is.’ Ezekiel leaned forward in his chair, chains rattling. His eyes never moved from her face. ‘Lying is not a good way to build trust. I can’t tell you the truth if I don’t trust you, do you understand?’

‘I do.’

‘Then don’t lie to me again. If you do, the conversation’s over.’

‘Understood. Why did you want to speak to me about Kendra Sheppard?’

‘Have you checked the room for listening devices?’

‘No.’

He seemed puzzled. ‘Why not?’

‘It would be illegal for the prison to eavesdrop on our conversation.’

‘The cameras are watching us.’

‘They are, but I can assure you nobody is listening.’

‘Assured by
whom
? The guards posted outside the door?’

‘I don’t have any equipment to sweep the room for bugs, Mr Ezekiel. What do you suggest we do?’

‘Sit next to me. I’ll whisper against your ear.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘I’m not going to hurt you, if that’s what you’re wondering. I can’t. Look.’ He tried to hold up his cuffed wrists. He couldn’t, of course. She knew they were shackled to the chain around his waist, and he was shackled to the chair.

‘It’s for your protection’, he said. ‘And mine.’

‘Even so, the prison won’t allow it.’

‘Ask them. Please.’

‘No.’

‘Then I’m sorry, I can’t speak to you.’

Darby stood. ‘Goodbye, Mr Ezekiel.’

‘Be careful out on the streets.’

She knocked on the door.

‘And promise me you’ll stay clear of the FBI,’ Ezekiel said. ‘I don’t trust those sons of bitches.’

47

Darby stepped into the adjoining room and stood under the harsh bright fluorescent lights debating about whether to feed into the schizophrenic man’s paranoid delusions.

Ezekiel knew Amy Hallcox’s real name. Kendra had come to see him, they had spoken, and now she was dead. Her son had tried to kill himself after a man pretending to be a Federal agent went inside his hospital room threatening to take the boy away into protective custody. And this man
was
, in fact, a Federal agent named Peter Alan who had supposedly died two decades ago and was now lying in the morgue.

Both guards were staring at her. She told them about Ezekiel’s request.

The male guard, Billy Biceps, shook his head.

‘No way in hell can we allow
that
,’ the female guard said. ‘That man in there’s a known biter. He sinks his teeth in your ear, he’ll rip it clean off your head.’

‘Has he done that before?’ Darby asked.

‘Twice. Last time he tried to swallow the ear. He didn’t, but he had mangled it so goddamn bad the surgeons couldn’t reattach it. You want to walk around with a missing ear?’

‘It might complement the scars on my face.’

‘I thought doctors were supposed to be smart.’

‘I’ll talk to Superintendent Skinner,’ Darby said. ‘Where’s your phone?’

Skinner wouldn’t allow it. Darby kept pressing, stating her reasons, while watching Ezekiel on the video monitor. He was struggling to look underneath the table for listening devices.

She was thinking about what Skinner had told her about Ezekiel ‘glassing’ one of the psychiatric nurses when Skinner said, ‘Fine, go ahead and do it your way. But if Ezekiel hurts you in a bad way, the prison isn’t going to be held liable.’

‘I understand.’

‘No, I want to hear you say it.’

‘I assume all liability.’

Back inside the private conference room, the doors locked, Darby picked up the chair, brought it around the table and placed it beside Ezekiel. Then she turned the chair around so it was facing away from the table. If he tried anything, she’d have some room to manoeuvre.

‘You need to move closer,’ he said.

She kicked her chair next to his.

‘Thank you.’ He smiled, flashing his crooked yellow teeth. ‘You’re a very brave woman, Dr McCormick. Very composed, in control of your emotions. I’m sure, if given the opportunity, you’d rip me apart with your bare hands.’

‘You’re right. I would.’

‘I appreciate your honesty. Take a seat.’

She could smell the cigarette odour baked into his orange jumpsuit, the medicinal odour of the shampoo the prison used to delouse the inmates. He had nicotine-stained fingers and greasy brown fingernails. Those same fingers had been wrapped around the gun that had killed her father.

His eyes were no longer dull; they were bright and alive now, gleaming with satisfaction.

‘You smell wonderful,’ he said.

‘I can’t say the same for you.’

He let loose a low chuckle. ‘What happened to your beautiful face?’

‘Accident,’ she said.

‘It’s amazing how much you look like him – your father, I mean. Tommy had the same dark red hair and those piercing green eyes. It’s funny how genetics works, isn’t it?’

‘Did you know my father?’

‘Very well. I admired him greatly. May I come closer?’

Darby nodded. The chains rattled as Ezekiel moved. She felt his whiskers brush up against her cheek.

His mouth was against her ear, and she could hear the slight wheeze from his lungs. His sour breath smelled like a rancid blast of hot air caught in a subway tunnel.

‘Kendra introduced me to your father,’ he whispered. ‘I heard about what happened to her son, by the way. How is he?’

She moved next to his ear and whispered, ‘He’s brain dead. Who’s his father?’

‘Kendra said some guy knocked her up, and she decided to keep the baby. She wouldn’t tell me the father’s name. Did anyone have a chance to speak to the boy before he shot himself?’

‘I did, for a little bit. He asked to speak to my father. He didn’t know he was dead.’

‘Kendra didn’t know either, until she came to Belham.’

‘I find that hard to believe.’

‘Kendra left Charlestown before your father was murdered. I had no idea where she went – I wasn’t supposed to know, and I never bothered to try to track her down. I didn’t want to put her in danger. Nobody heard from her either. I asked her old friends. That’s why Kendra survived as long as she did. She didn’t call anyone back home, afraid that someone’s phone may have been tapped and they’d find her. And there was no internet back then.’

‘How did she find out?’

‘She came to Belham, went to the house where you used to live and spoke to the new owners. They’re from Belham originally and knew about your family. By the way, I was sorry to hear about your mother’s passing.’

Ezekiel speaking with an exaggerated sorrow, as if he actually knew her.

‘After Kendra found out about your father,’ he whispered, ‘she did a little research, found out my new residence and set up a visit. Needless to say, she was quite upset and wanted to know what had happened. She loved your father very much. Big Red was a remarkable man. One of a kind, you could say. I regret what happened to him every single day.’

Darby swallowed, found herself making a fist. She stared at his bony neck, a part of her hoping he’d try something. She’d snap his neck before the guards entered the room.
I won’t kill him. I’ll snap his neck just the right way so he’ll end up a quadriplegic, spending the rest of his life in diapers and feeding tubes
.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he whispered.

‘What am I thinking, Mr Ezekiel?’

‘You want to know why Kendra came all the way down from Vermont when she could have picked up a payphone, called the Belham Police Department and asked for your father. Someone there would have told her what had happened.’

‘Why didn’t she?’

‘Police stations record everything now – phone calls, they have security cameras monitoring you the second you step inside. She didn’t want to risk the possibility of someone recognizing her. Kendra didn’t trust the police, but she did trust your father. The last thing he told her before she left was that if there was ever a problem to never, under any circumstances, call or come by the station. The phone lines were tapped, and he’d found out someone had bugged his office. Big Red told her to go by his house, and that’s what she did.’

‘Why was Kendra looking for my father?’

‘What do you know about Francis Sullivan, the head of the Irish mob?’

That name again,
Darby thought. ‘I know he’s dead.’

‘I knew Mr Sullivan – that’s what you called him, even if you worked for him. I’m embarrassed to say I went back to the trade that sent me away to prison the first time – selling drugs. I had a network of contacts. Mr Sullivan wanted to take advantage of that, and I needed the money. What do you know about Kendra?’

‘I know she was arrested for prostitution.’

‘Kendra had a drug problem. Coke. She worked the streets for a while before Mr Sullivan brought her to these hotel parties where she serviced a number of men. Including cops.’

Michelle Baxter had told her the same thing.

‘Mr Sullivan,’ he whispered, ‘liked rough sex.’

Darby recalled what Baxter had told her about Sullivan holding a gun to her head.

‘Kendra didn’t mind it, so he kept her around. He had a thing for young girls, but that wasn’t what got him off. I didn’t believe the stories until… I walked in on him once. He was with a young woman – a teenager. I don’t know her name, she wasn’t from the neighbourhood, but I could tell she was very, very young. I didn’t see the braces until… afterwards.’

He swallowed. She heard a hitch in his voice.

‘Mr Sullivan had this poor girl on all fours. They were on the bed. Mr Sullivan was behind her, pumping away, holding her by the hair so he could slit her throat.’

In her mind’s eye Darby saw Kendra Sheppard bound to the kitchen chair, her head nearly decapitated.

‘I wanted to stop it, but the girl was already bleeding out,’ he whispered. ‘Mr Sullivan saw me – I was standing in the doorway, frozen. He was covered in blood, like he’d bathed in it. He got off the bed very calmly – I swear he did, I’m not imagining it. He didn’t come after me. He pointed to the girl with the straight-edged razor, this poor young girl who was running into the walls and choking on her own blood, and he looked at me and said, ‘Go ahead and give her a whirl, Zeke. She’s still got some life in her.’ That’s when I got the hell out of there.’

Darby had to clear her throat. ‘Where did this happen?’

‘Kevin Reynolds’s house in Charlestown. He lived there with his mother, Mary Jane. There’s a bedroom to the right of the stairs. Mr Sullivan took all his… victims there. Sometimes Kendra would find him napping in there. She told me that, even in the winter, you could smell the blood. It didn’t matter how many times they cleaned up or replaced the rugs, that odour never went away, she said.’

‘After you saw this, what did you do?’

‘I went into hiding for a few days. I knew Mr Sullivan was looking for me – I was a witness, a liability. I went to Kendra. She was a friend. I told her what I’d seen, and that’s when she introduced me to your father.’

‘Why?’

‘When you were at the hospital speaking to Kendra’s son, did he confide in you?’

‘He told me his real name was Sean.’

‘What else?’

‘He said he knew the real reason why his grandparents were murdered. We didn’t get a chance to speak about it.’

‘Why not?’

‘We were interrupted.’

‘By the FBI?’

Her breath caught. That information hadn’t been reported in the news.

‘Listen to me very carefully,’ Ezekiel said. ‘The men who killed Kendra Sheppard – at one time they were Federal agents from the Boston office. These men’s assignment was to dismantle the Irish and Italian mobs. But their main job was to protect Mr Sullivan.’

Darby recalled what Jennings had told her about Sullivan’s special status. ‘Was he an informant?’

‘Mr Sullivan was much, much more valuable.’ Ezekiel swallowed, his breath coming out sharply, excitedly. ‘He was a Federal agent. The FBI had planted a Federal agent at the head of the Irish mob. Sullivan’s real name is Benjamin Masters.’

‘Kendra told you this?’

‘No,’ Ezekiel said. ‘Your father did.’