The Dead Room (30 page)

69

Darby staggered outside into a muggy night air drizzling with rain. Flashing blue, red and white strobe lights lit up the entire neighbourhood. At least half a dozen Wellesley police cruisers blocked off the street, parked at the far ends to give enough room for the two ambulances – and now a fire truck. She could hear its high-pitched siren wailing in the distance, building.

The driveway, covered in shards of glass and a couple of empty shotgun shells, had been taped off. A light grey smoke drifted from the gaps in Chadzynski’s crumpled bonnet – the reason the fire department had been summoned. Darby watched two patrolmen tape off the body, its limbs twisted and broken, lying on the grass. Warner, the head of Christina Chadzynski’s Anti-Corruption Unit.
More like the woman’s personal hit squad
, Darby thought, catching sight of the wet blood on the man’s torn clothes.

She needed to find a quiet place to call Coop. She walked numbly across the damp grass and into a big garden with overgrown grass.

At the far end she spotted a hammock set up between two thick pine trees. That looked good. Her legs carried her there and then fluttered with fatigue and relief after she plunked herself down on the wet fabric. Her heart thumped dully inside her chest, as if it wanted to go to sleep.

Shadows moved across the grass, which was lit by the windows of the house – every light had been turned on. Darby’s gaze drifted up to the windows of the room with the dried blood splattered against the walls and carpet. She thought of her mother sitting on the side of her father’s hospital bed, Sheila holding Big Red’s rough and callused hand on her lap and reciting lines from Dylan Thomas’s ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’, a poem her mother knew by heart. Sheila had said ‘bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray’ as the doctor shut off the life support machine. When her mother reached the end of the poem, she started again, holding back tears and saying the words clearly as she waited for Big Red’s body to die.

When the fire truck’s siren shut off, the only sound now the thudding throb of its engine, she took out her phone and dialled Coop’s number. One ring and he picked up.

‘Christ, Darby, where the hell have you been? I’ve been calling you for the past hour.’

Hearing his voice released the tightness inside her chest. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine, but I’ve been worried sick about you. I got that voice clip you sent me. What’s going on? Why didn’t you call me back?’

‘I met Father Humphrey.’

Coop didn’t speak. She could hear chatter and noises on the other end of the line.
He’s at the airport
, she thought, and her heart started racing.

‘He’s dead, Coop. So is Kevin Reynolds. You don’t have to leave.’

‘What happened?’

‘I’ll tell you in person. Where can I meet you?’

‘I’m at the airport.’

‘You don’t have to leave,’ she said again. ‘You and your sister can come home.’

‘I’m going to London.’

She felt short of breath.

Don’t leave
, she wanted to say.
I need you here. With me.

‘I’ve got to go, Darby. Final boarding call.’

She could hear the sadness in his voice.
No, that’s not entirely true
. She also heard relief. In six hours he would be walking through a new airport halfway around the world, walking through a new country where nobody knew his secrets. Where he could start afresh, maybe even reinvent himself.

‘Take another flight, Coop. I’ll pay for it. I want to see you before you go. Spend some time and talk –’

‘It won’t change anything.’

‘Just listen to me for a moment.’ She knew what she wanted to say – words that rushed through her a lot these days every time she saw Coop – but couldn’t put them together.

Start with what happened back at the house.

‘This afternoon, when you were about to leave, you came back.’

‘I shouldn’t have done that,’ he said.

‘I’m glad you did. I…’

Why is this so goddamn hard?

‘I just wanted to say… I…’

‘I know’, he said. ‘I feel the same way, for whatever it’s worth.’

‘It’s worth a lot.’
And I was too stupid or too scared or too selfish or all of the above and probably a hundred other things to act on it. But I don’t want you to leave. I don’t think I’ll be able to live with that.

‘If you feel that way,’ Darby said, ‘then don’t leave.’

‘I have to. I’ve wanted to get away from here for a long time. There’s no reason for me to stay.’

What about me? I’m not a good enough reason?

‘I’ve really got to go,’ he said.

Darby squeezed her eyes shut.

‘Okay,’ she said, choking on the word. ‘Have a safe flight.’

‘Bye, Darb.’

‘Bye.’

A soft click and the airport noise disappeared. Coop was gone.

70

Jamie lay on a gurney in the back of the wailing ambulance. With the use of her good eye, she watched the EMT with the pudgy face and curly hair clip an IV bag above her head. She tried to speak to him but her words were lost inside the oxygen mask covering her mouth.

She didn’t feel any physical pain. They had given her some sort of shot and the pain had disappeared but not the worry. No cruiser-load of dope could take that away. That and love.

The EMT moved away in a blur and disappeared. Michael took his spot. He knelt down next to her and a moment later she felt his cold hands clamp around hers. The anxiety vanished, her heart swelling with relief. And love. He could be a stubborn shit, yes, but she loved him, Christ, she did, and if she could have one wish right now it was that Michael might know what she carried inside her heart.

Michael’s face crumpled. ‘I’m so sorry, Mom.’

She wanted to take off the mask and speak to him but the EMTs had strapped her down so she couldn’t move.

‘You… ah… did right… ah… thing,’ she said, knowing Michael couldn’t hear her but still needing to say the words.

‘I wanted to run downstairs to the phone but I was afraid to leave Carter alone. I didn’t want anything to happen to him. If anything did, you’d hate me.’

‘Proud,’ she said. ‘Proud… of… ah… you.’

Michael started sobbing. ‘He was so scared, Mom. So scared. I put my hands over his ears when you started screaming. I turned his face so he wouldn’t see anything. I had my hands over his ears and he could still hear you screaming and he was starting to cry and I wanted to run – we both did – but I kept whispering to him that he had to be quiet. He had to be quiet no matter how much he was scared ’cause that was the only way we could protect you.’

He buried his face in her lap and squeezed her hand. She could feel him shaking as he cried.

‘I love you, Michael. Proud.’

She turned her head to the EMT, wanting to ask him why he was just sitting there, and then she saw Carter’s face, shiny with tears, appear above his brother’s shoulder. She wiggled her fingers, trying to wave hello.

Carter crawled on top of the gurney. The EMT, thank God, didn’t stop him. Carter kissed her forehead, then curled his small body beside hers, the stubble of his crew cut pressing up against her cheek. His head and all its scars still smelled faintly of soap.

He placed an arm gently across her chest. He kissed her cheek.

Jamie closed her eyes. She could drift off to sleep now. Michael and Carter were safe. There was no need to worry any more. Michael and Carter were safe.

‘Mommy?’

She opened her eyes and saw Carter’s face hovering above hers.

‘Michael and me are here,’ Carter said. ‘You can go to sleep and when you wake up we’ll be here.’

She smiled behind the mask. Carter smiled too.

Her babies. Her two brave boys.

‘We won’t go anywhere, Mommy,’ Carter said. ‘We won’t never ever leave you. You won’t ever be alone. Promise.’

This is the only thing that matters
, Jamie thought.
This is what you lived for, this feeling you had for your children. And nothing – not even God Himself – can come between it
.

Epilogue

Christina Chadzynski was buried on a bright summer morning in her hometown of West Roxbury. Boston police had cordoned off the surrounding streets to accommodate the swelling numbers of officers and politicians attending the funeral. The media were out in full force, their numbers swelling behind the police barricades, to film the spectacle

While the murder of a police commissioner was front-page news, the real reason for their presence was to hunt for information about how dead FBI agents had somehow risen from the ashes. Had the FBI known? Had they deliberately helped in the subterfuge? So far, Boston PD and the FBI had managed to prevent anything from leaking out.

Well, maybe not for long
, Darby thought, and checked her watch.

She stood with hundreds of other mourners at the cemetery. Her lawyer, a man named Benjamin Jones who had successfully handled a lot of investigations for Boston police officers, had insisted that she come. He wanted her front and centre, to show everyone she had nothing to hide.

She didn’t have anything to hide, but that hadn’t prevented her from being suspended, with pay, pending an internal investigation.

She recalled her SWAT instructor’s warning:
Every bullet has a lawyer’s name on it.

From behind her dark sunglasses she looked at the predominantly male faces across from her, staring and watching. Her. She had got used to the stares. Some officers, she was sure, had found out what really happened. There was no such thing as a secret inside Boston PD. She was also sure that some of those officers were wondering if their voices or names were on Kendra Sheppard’s flash drive.

Darby hadn’t been allowed to listen to or see what was on the USB drive. It had been confiscated by the Boston brass, along with her phone containing her taped conversation with Chadzynski.

For the past week the commissioner’s death had been front-page news. The national news outlets were more interested in the discovery of the body inside an abandoned East Boston auto garage – Special Agent Jack King, a man who, along with Frank Sullivan and three other Federal agents, had supposedly died in 1983.

There was still no official comment from the FBI. The Boston Police Department’s PR machine, though, was already in motion.

The PR rep cited how the police commissioner’s Criminal Services Unit discovered the bodies of two other ‘dead’ Federal agents – Peter Alan, who had been found shot to death inside the basement of a home owned by Kevin Reynolds; and Steven White, who had been killed at the Wellesley home of Jamie Russo, a previous victim of an unsolved home invasion that had claimed the lives of her husband and two children. While the PR rep would not cite actual specifics of the ‘ongoing investigation’, it was reported that Police Commissioner Chadzynski had been shot to death by a nine-millimetre handgun belonging to Arthur Pine, a Belham detective who had died at the garage along with former Federal agent Jack King.

The Boston press, through ‘inside sources close to the investigation’, reported that Chadzynski had been murdered to prevent the exposure of the four FBI agents who had allegedly died, along with Frank Sullivan, in July of 1983.

The PR rep wouldn’t explain what the commissioner was doing at an abandoned automotive garage.

There was much speculation in the press as to whether or not Frank Sullivan was alive but no mention of his real name or the fact that he was a Federal agent.

Darby checked her watch, wondering about the fourth and final agent, Anthony Frissora. As far as she knew, he had not been found. She doubted he ever would be.

The preacher gave a heart-thumping eulogy about Chadzynski’s ‘dedicated years of service to justice’ and ‘her tireless crusade to keeping Boston’s streets safe’. Darby tuned it out, looking at the massive flower arrangements scattered around the coffin, and thought about Jamie Russo.

She had tried speaking to the woman on two separate occasions. Each time Russo showed her the same piece of paper containing the same message: ‘My lawyer has advised me not to speak with anyone. And I can’t allow you to speak to either Michael or Carter. They’re traumatized by what happened, as I’m sure you can understand. They’re being treated here at the hospital. The doctors have generously allowed me to stay here with them until they’re released.’

Darby knew the woman had a lawyer. Wellesley police had found a wallet belonging to Ben Masters and a mobile phone that didn’t belong to Russo. Police had also found a .44 Magnum. Since Wellesley was outside of Boston’s jurisdiction, the state lab had been used to process the evidence. Darby had heard, through Randy Scott, that the state’s ballistics had confirmed that the Magnum had been used in the Belham home. Jamie Russo, watching through the woods with her husband’s binoculars, had shot her way inside the house to save Sean Sheppard.

Finally the fulsome eulogy ended.

Everyone bowed their heads and prayed.

Darby felt her new phone, a BlackBerry, vibrate against her hip.

A message had come in from Coop. She read it and waited.

Darby watched the coffin being lowered into the ground. She thought back to her father’s elegant casket being lowered into its final resting place, the grass around her leeched of colour, tears sliding down her cheeks. Her father was dressed in a black suit, the only one he owned, and she remembered wondering if the newly dead could still feel heat, wondered if her father was still suffering in that casket. She remembered wanting to ask her mother and then stopped when Sheila ushered her away from the grave.

Now her mother was dead, buried next to her father, and here she was, their daughter, standing at the grave of the woman who had played some role in her father’s murder. Why? Because her lawyer told her to. Because it
looked
good. She was here keeping up appearances. Darby wondered what her father would think of her now, standing here.

Suddenly all around her came the sound of mobile phones ringing. The preacher was not pleased and gave the crowd a disgusted look to show he meant business. It didn’t stop everyone from checking their mobile phones.

Darby tried watching each of their faces. She was especially pleased by the blank look on the mayor’s face as he listened to the audio clip of her conversation with the police commissioner. Coop had worked tirelessly the past week, calling his old friends and contacts to find out the mobile phone numbers of every Boston bigwig. Darby gave him the numbers for the movers and shakers inside Boston PD, all of whom were in attendance. That was phase one.

Phase two was to send out messages to the media, saying they could listen to Christina Chadzynski’s message free of charge on the massively popular internet site YouTube.

The mayor hung up and looked at her, eyes like daggers. Then he mumbled something into the ear of Chadzynski’s grieving husband and turned to leave.

The mayor pushed his way through the crowd. Now the senator excused himself.

The crowd started to dissipate around her. The preacher looked confused.

Darby watched the spectacle. She wasn’t aware that Randy Scott was standing next to her until he spoke.

‘What’s going on?’

‘I don’t know, but it doesn’t look good,’ Darby said. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I thought you’d like to know they found Dr Wexler in France. They’re working on extraditing him back to the States. He’s talking with the Feds, trying to work out a plea deal.’

A deal
, Darby thought, watching everyone scattering across the grass.

‘The Feds are slowly worming their way into the investigation,’ Randy said. ‘Now that they have Wexler on team Fed, they’ve asked to look at those pictures you gave the Photography Unit. I hear Boston PD’s going to play along. It’s a trading game. You tell me this, I’ll tell you that.’

Then they’ll play a final round of damage control. I’ll scratch your back and you’ll scratch mine
.

‘I’m in contact with this guy at the state’s forensic lab,’ Randy said. ‘We’ve been coordinating evidence for the past week. He tells me that he has it on good authority that Kevin Reynolds is a Federal agent.’

‘What a surprise.’

‘Well, I thought you’d want to know. As for the evidence the police commissioner said she planted – your father’s murder book and the associated evidence – I haven’t found anything yet. I probably won’t. The brass is forming an independent committee – a special task force – to look into the matter, and into Chadzynski. They’ve also confiscated the evidence to make sure it isn’t tampered with. In other words, they booted everyone at the lab off the case.’

‘Wonderful.’

‘One other thing… Sean Sheppard died this morning.’

Darby took in a deep breath.

‘I’m sorry.’

She nodded. ‘I forgot to thank you for everything.’

‘Nothing to it.’ He forced a grin. ‘See you soon.’

‘I don’t think so.’ She started walking.

‘Where are you going?’

Darby didn’t answer. She tossed her badge into the grave and looked out at the roads, wondering which one led home.