The Dead Room (5 page)

9

Darby stood with Pine and a Belham patrolman around the corner from the nurses’ station, next to a trolley holding discarded cafeteria trays. The odours of sour milk and steamed vegetables were a welcome relief from Pine’s cigar stench.

The patrolman’s name was Richard Rodman. His thick grey hair, carefully combed and parted, did not match his youthful face. Darby thought he looked like a budding politician stuffed inside a cop’s blue uniform. He held a white-paper mailer spotted with blood from the teenager’s bloody T-shirt. The emergency room physician had cut the shirt off the teenager and then had the good sense to transfer it to a paper bag. Plastic bags broke down DNA. Not all doctors knew this.

‘I was sitting on a chair outside his room when he opened the door and asked if I knew a Belham cop named Thomas McCormick,’ Rodman said. ‘I said no, I didn’t, and the kid said everyone called McCormick Big Red. Kid said he needed to talk to McCormick but wouldn’t tell me why.’

Rodman looked at Darby. ‘I remembered seeing you on TV last year when you caught that whack-job, what’s his name, the guy who shot women in the head, put Virgin Mary statues in their pockets and dumped them in the river.’

‘Walter Smith,’ Darby said.

Rodman snapped his fingers. ‘That’s the guy. What happened to him?’

‘He’s in a mental institution. He’ll be spending the rest of his life there.’

‘God bless us all. The news story I saw did this profile on you and I remembered something about you growing up in Belham and your old man being a cop. So I went to the nurses’ station, used a computer to do a Google search, then called operations and here we are.’

‘Did you tell the boy that Thomas McCormick is dead?’

‘No. I figured it might be better if you tell him. You know, use that as your way in.’

‘Has anyone come to see him?’

Rodman shook his head. ‘No phone calls either.’

‘I think it’s better if I see him alone.’

‘I’m fine with that. The less, the better, I say. The kid’s really shook up.’

Darby turned to Pine.

‘I think it’s a good idea,’ Pine said.

Darby pushed herself off the wall and grabbed the small digital tape recorder from her back pocket. ‘Where is he?’

‘Straight down the hall,’ Rodman said.

Darby opened the door. The teenager had turned off the lights in his room. In the dim light coming from the window next to his bed, she could see that someone had worked him over good. The left side of his face was swollen, the eye nearly shut.

He sat up in bed, a blanket covering his legs. His bandaged arm, perched in a sling, rested against his bare chest, tanned from the sun. Tall and lean, he had barely any muscle tone.

‘Hello, John. My name is Darby McCormick. I understand you wanted to see my father.’

‘Where is he?’

His voice was raw. And young.

‘May I come in?’

He considered the question for a moment. His blond hair was cut short, his forehead damp with sweat. All-American good-looks. The ER doctor had used butterfly sutures on the split skin.

Finally, he nodded.

She shut the door and sat on the end of the bed. The skin along his wrists and eyes was red. Patches of missing hair above the ears. She could see that he had been crying.

‘Where’s your father?’ he asked again.

‘He’s dead.’

The boy swallowed. His eyes went wide, as if a door had just been slammed shut in his face.

‘What happened to him?’

‘My father was a patrolman and pulled over a car,’ Darby said. ‘The person behind the wheel was a schizophrenic recently released from prison. My father approached the vehicle and for some reason this person shot him.’

‘And he died?’

‘My father managed to radio for help, but by the time he was rushed to the hospital he had lost too much blood. He was already brain dead. My mother made the decision to pull him off life support, and he died.’

‘When?’

‘Before you were born,’ Darby said. ‘How old are you?’

‘I’ll be thirteen next March.’

Twelve
, Darby thought.
Someone had tied a twelve-year-old boy down to a kitchen chair seated across from his mother
.

‘What happened to your arm?’

‘I strained a muscle or something, and the doctor gave me this sling,’ John said. ‘Can I ask you a question?’

‘You can ask me anything you want.’

‘The person who shot your father, did they catch him?’

‘Yes, they did. He’s in jail.’

The boy looked at the gun clipped to her belt. ‘Are you a cop?’

‘I’m a special investigator for the Criminal Services Unit. I help victims of violent crimes. Can you tell me about the people who taped you down to the kitchen chair?’

‘How’d you –’ His lips clamped shut.

‘The skin along your wrists and your cheeks,’ Darby said. ‘Those are marks left from duct tape.’

He turned his head to the window. He blinked several times, his eyes growing wet.

Darby placed a hand on his knee. The boy shuddered.

‘I’m here to help. You can trust me.’

He didn’t answer. From outside the room came a steady
beep-beep-beep
from some piece of machinery and the murmured voices of Pine and the patrolman. The talking stopped. Darby wondered if they were standing near the door, trying to listen.

‘But how do I know?’

‘Know what?’

‘That I can trust you,’ he said.

‘You asked for my father.’

‘And you said he’s dead.’

‘I’m his daughter.’

‘So you say.’

Darby reached into her pocket. She removed the creased photo from her wallet and placed it on his lap.

‘This is a picture of my father,’ she said.

He picked up the photo of her father dressed in his patrolman’s uniform. A gap-toothed six-year-old girl with emerald-green eyes and long auburn pigtails sat on his lap.

‘Is this you?’

Darby nodded. ‘Do you recognize him?’

‘I’ve never met your father.’ He handed the picture back to her. ‘For all I know this photo is a fake.’

‘See this laminated card hanging around my neck? The picture matches the one on my licence. Here, look.’

He did.

‘I’m Thomas McCormick’s daughter.’ She said the words softly; she didn’t want this to be a confrontation. ‘You can trust me. But if you want me to help, you have to be honest with me.’

He said nothing.

‘What’s your father’s name?’

‘I don’t know,’ John said. ‘I never met him.’

‘Do you have a stepfather?’

‘My mom never got married.’

‘Do you have any other siblings?’

‘No.’

‘What about aunts, uncles or cousins?’

‘My mom… It was just me and her.’

His lips clamped shut again, then his eyes. His chest heaved in the air and he started to tremble.

‘It’s okay.’ Darby took his hand. ‘It’s okay.’

‘My mom…’ He cleared his throat and tried again. ‘She said that if something happened to her, if I ever got into trouble or was scared, I had to call Thomas McCormick. She said he’s the only police officer to trust. She told me not to talk to anyone else, under any circumstances.’

He started bawling.

‘My mom’s dead and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.’

10

Darby grabbed a box of tissues from the nightstand. John Hallcox did not take the tissues but he took her hand and held it while he sobbed.

Drops of rain flecked the window. She wondered if the Wonder Twins had found anything inside the woods. It was easier to look out of the window and think about Randy and Mark searching the muddy ground for evidence, to think about the ransacked house with all of its blood and broken glass, than it was to watch the twelve-year-old boy’s face.

A memory came to her: squeezing her father’s big and callused hand. It was the size of a baseball mitt. He lay in a hospital bed similar to this one, hooked up to tubes and monitors, and she had dug her fingernails into his skin, drawing blood, knowing he would wake up before the doctor removed him from life support.

‘I’m sorry, John. I’m truly sorry for what you’re going through.’

At last the awful crying ended. He grabbed several tissues and wiped his face.

She placed the digital recorder on the bed. ‘When you’re ready to talk, and with your permission, I’d like to tape this conversation. That way I can listen to you and not take notes. Is that okay?’

John nodded.

‘I’ll help you through this. Sometimes I may have to interrupt you with a question or I may ask you to clarify something. I need to make sure I have all the facts straight in my head. If you don’t understand something, ask, okay?’

He cleared his throat. ‘Okay.’

The boy clearly didn’t know where to start.

Gently, she said, ‘Tell me about the people who came inside your house.’

‘There were two of them. Two men. I was on the sofa watching TV when I heard the door open. I thought it was my mom coming home so I didn’t get up.’

‘You were home alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘And where was your mom?’

‘She said she had to go to a couple of job interviews and do some errands and wouldn’t be back until late. She told me to stay inside the house until she got home.’

‘Why? Was your mom worried about something?’

‘She was always worried. No matter where we lived, she was always telling me to make sure the apartment was locked up. She’d always make sure the windows were locked before she went to bed. Every day when I came home from school, she’d call to ask if everything was okay. I thought… My mom didn’t make a lot of money and we never lived in the best neighbourhoods. When we were in Los Angeles, our apartment got broken into and she freaked out. Two weeks later we were living in Asbury Park. That’s in New Jersey.’

‘Did you move around a lot?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Do you know why?’

‘I think it has something to do with her parents,’ John said. ‘They were murdered before I was born. She never got into specifics or anything. The only thing she told me was that the people who did it were never caught. I think she was scared they might come for her or something.’ He swallowed and then took in a sharp breath. ‘And they did. They found us and killed her.’

‘You said “they”. There was more than one person?’

‘You mean inside my house?’

‘We’ll get to that. I want to know about the people who murdered your grandparents.’

‘I don’t know names or anything. My mom just said people came into her parents’ house one night and shot them to death while they were sleeping. My mom said she wasn’t there – I don’t know where she was. She told me these people were never caught.’

‘What are the names of your grandparents?’

‘I don’t know. My mom never talked about them. I don’t even know where they lived. I asked her – I was, you know, curious about what had happened – but she wouldn’t go into any details. I think that’s what made her paranoid about using computers.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She never went on the internet to order anything. She couldn’t, anyway, ’cause she didn’t have a credit card – she always paid cash for everything. She thought people could spy on you if you were on the internet.’

‘Was she worried these men who murdered your grandparents would somehow find her?’

‘I guess. I mean, that’s what I thought.’

‘Do you know how old your mother was when her parents died?’

‘No.’

‘Where did she go to live?’

‘I don’t know. I’m sorry.’

‘You don’t have to apologize, John. You’re doing great. Let’s talk about why you came to Belham. You said something about a job opportunity. What kind of jobs?’

‘She didn’t tell me specifics. My mom… She’s fun and everything, takes me places, but there are certain things she’s real private about. At least with me.’

‘Like what happened to her parents.’

‘Right. She told me they were murdered before I was born. She was always afraid of something happening. And she’s not, you know, gushy with her emotions. She keeps them bottled up. When you talk to her about what’s bothering her, she won’t tell you.’

John was talking about her in the present tense, as if she were going to come through this door at any moment, sit down on the bed and hold him, tell him everything’s going to be fine.

‘Tell me about your mother’s friends,’ Darby said.

‘I never met them. For all I know, she didn’t have any.’

‘How long have you been living in Belham?’

‘Just a couple of days,’ he said. ‘We were only going to stay for, like, a week, or something.’

‘Do you know the names of the people who owned the house?’

‘No.’

‘Okay, let’s go back to when you were on the sofa. You said you heard the door open.’

‘It was the door at the end of the kitchen hall, the one that lead out to the garage. I know that because it makes this swishing sound against the floor when it opens.’

‘Did your mom leave one of the garage doors open?’

He thought about it for a moment.

‘I… I remember when my mom left, she told me to lock the door – the door at the end of the kitchen hall. But I don’t remember hearing the garage door shut. I’m not sure. It’s all confusing. It’s like I have all these snapshots flashing through my head all at once. It’s hard to keep track.’

‘That’s normal.’

‘So when it opened later, I thought it was my mother. And I was half-asleep on the sofa. I remember it was dark – I could see the backyard through the sliding glass door in the living room. That’s when I saw him, the man with the gun. He was standing at the end of the sofa telling me to stay quiet.’

‘Describe him to me. Tell me everything you noticed, even if you don’t think it’s important.’

‘He wasn’t wearing a ski mask or anything, which I thought was kind of odd. The other guy wasn’t either. I mean, that’s what you do when you rob a house, right?’

‘Right.’ Darby felt excitement bumping in her chest.
Two
men had entered the house and the boy had seen their faces. He could give descriptions to a sketch artist. A long shot, maybe, but if the pictures ran on TV someone might recognize them.

‘He was a white guy,’ John said. ‘And he was wearing this warm-up suit – the kind the Celtics wear. Had a Celtics hat too. A baseball cap. He was old. He kind of looked like someone’s grandfather but his face was, like, weird.’

‘Weird how?’

‘He didn’t have any wrinkles. His skin was, like, all smoothed back. It reminded me of Mrs Milstein – she was our neighbour when we were living in Toronto. She got a facelift and her skin was real tight and kind of shiny. My mom said Mrs Milstein had gotten a facelift. This Celtics guy had the same kind of face, and his hands… they weren’t right. They looked like they belonged on someone else. They were all wrinkled and hairy, and I saw these big veins sticking out on them. They reminded me of the hands I saw on the really old guys at nursing homes.’

‘When did you get a close-up look at this man’s hands?’

‘When he was…’ He swallowed again. ‘He made me get up from the sofa and sit on one of the kitchen chairs. That’s when I saw the other guy. He was standing in the kitchen. He pointed a nine-millimetre at me while the Celtics guy taped me down to the chair.’

‘You recognized his gun?’

‘I watch a lot of cop shows.
CSI, Law and Order
– stuff like that. The cops always carry nines. And when they interview the victims, they always ask for details.’ His voice sounded so terribly frail. ‘So when I… When all of this was happening, there was, like, this voice in the back of my head telling me to pay attention to everything. The little details are what catch these guys.’

‘You’re doing a great job, John. This is really helpful. Tell me about the man standing in the kitchen.’

‘He was wearing a suit – not a warm-up suit, I mean the kind a banker or lawyer would wear. He wasn’t wearing a tie, though. He was a white guy and kind of… not fat but he had a gut on him. I remember he kept checking his watch.’

‘Was he wearing gloves?’

John nodded. ‘Blue ones, the kind the forensics people wear on TV.’

‘Do you remember what colour his shirt was?’

‘White.’

The body she’d seen in the woods had had a white shirt and blue latex gloves.

‘Did these men talk to you?’

‘The Celtics guy did,’ John said. ‘He said he just wanted to take a look around the house and he couldn’t do that while keeping an eye on me. ‘Relax, champ, this will all be over before you know it,’ is what he said. Then he put tape across my eyes and patted me on the shoulder. He didn’t talk to me after that.’

‘Do you remember hearing anything? Did you hear their names? What they said to each other?’

‘I didn’t hear their names. They swore a lot. They started searching through the kitchen, ripping open the drawers and throwing out plates. All I kept hearing were things smashing against the floor.’

‘What were they looking for?’

‘I don’t know. I thought… I was pretty sure I heard a phone ringing and then the smashing stopped. I know the garage door opened, I remember hearing it. That’s when everything got real quiet. Then they grabbed my mother.’

He swallowed again, his shiny eyes growing wide with fear as his mind started replaying what had happened to his mother.

Darby moved him away from it. ‘Why did you ask to speak to my father?’

He didn’t answer. He looked down at the tissues balled in his fist, his eyes darting back and forth as if he had dropped the answers to the question.

She leaned closer. ‘You can trust me, John.’

He reached for the tape recorder and shut it off.