The Dead Soul (37 page)

92

Monday, September 15 – 2:15 P.M.

Clutching his thigh with both hands, Jake Cooper thrashed on the floor.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Optimist head into the Planetarium. Taking a lesson he had learned running on the streets of Southie, the cop reacted without thinking. He tore off his shirt and ripped a long strip from it. Then yanked the knife out in one quick extraction, screaming in pain and tossing the knife on the carpet, before tying the strip of cloth around his thigh in a makeshift tourniquet.

It burned—lemon juice squeezed on an open wound.

Jake stood as upright as he could. Caught his breath. Checked his gun to make sure his .357 was loaded and ready. Then hobbled into the Planetarium, the barrel of his weapon leading the way.

It was dark inside the immense, sphere-shaped room. It smelled of cleaning fluids—bleach and Pine-Sol, the same synthetic, fake-fresh odor the precinct took on after the night crew finished its work. The domelike screen covering the ceiling gave off a bit of light because it was so, well, white. The red-and-black exit signs brightened up the aisles. Yet it was hard to see anything beyond a ten-foot radius of where you stood.

Jake heard a seat rattle. Then a tired laugh. “She begged for her life, Detective.” The Optimist’s voice echoed loudly throughout the empty room.

Jake’s leg stiffened. Cramped. The makeshift noose kept the bleeding to a minimum. But it hurt like hell.

“What’s happening here, Meyers?” Jake looked down the rows and aisles of seats. Bending down as far as he could, he didn’t see anything.

“I hear the trumpets of angels, Detective.” The Optimist had a hard time speaking. “Oh, how beautiful they sound. They’re singing my name.”

“This is over, Meyers.”

“As you know by now, Jake, I am not a rapist. But I need to tell you that I did have sex with your wife. It was not fun.”

Jake squeezed his eyes closed as a mountain of rage welled up.

“You know, I was going to bury Brendan and leave a map for you to find him—with a window of opportunity, that sort of thing.”

Jake flashed on an image of the little girl. Her mouth full of dirt. Her fingernails broken and oily from trying to dig her way out of the hole. Her favorite stuffed animal—a Webkinz seal—still in her arms. The pathologist had confirmed Jake was minutes away from saving her.

“I’m going to kill you, Meyers,” Jake whispered. He knew the killer could hear him.

“Doing that to Brendan, I thought, shit, maybe it would be too much. Send you over the edge. Then our game would be over. No more fun.”

Jake heard a soft squeak from the rubber sole of a shoe, a gym floor during a basketball game. It came from over by the stage in the middle of the room. The Planetarium’s projector, a praying mantis-looking apparatus, stood tall as a man, its dome-shaped ball, the singing end of a microphone, pointed toward the ceiling.

Jake dropped to the ground. His butt nearly touched the floor. He had his back against the side of the stage. His thigh throbbed. He fought through the burn, which had turned into a pure toothache-like pain magnified by a thousand. He felt a trickle of warm blood run down his leg. He now knew where the Optimist was hiding. He was close enough to see his shadow, faint as it was, casting an outline beyond the planetarium’s projector. He could hear his labored bleeding.

He’s hurt
.

The Optimist hid on the opposite edge of the platform, just beyond where the projector was bolted to the stage. He had no idea where Jake was, or that Jake knew his location. He kept looking in different directions. It was no use. His vision was blurred. He had bled so much from being cut by the glass, the puncture wound to his appendix hemorrhaging so profusely, he was dizzy. Falling in and out. Running a fever. Sweating. Rocking back and forth.

He sat on his butt. Back against a waist-high wooden wall. Held his side.

Jake was quiet. He moved with the grace of a burglar, making little noise, inching his way along the edge of the stage. Closing in on the Optimist, he could hear him wheezing, taking long, labored breaths, hospital machine-like.

Darth Vader.

About five feet from his target, Jake stopped. He walked eight paces out in front of the Optimist, who could not see him.

But the killer heard him. He looked straight ahead.

“That you, Jakester?” he somehow managed to say in raspy, hoarse tone.

Jake set a good bead on his target. The light from an overhead exit sign projected just enough to give him a clear vantage point.

The Optimist spoke as loud as he could through the pain. “Jake, did you know that sin and evil are … are … ow … manifestations of self-centeredness and pride … shit, ow … that lead to oppression against others?” He bit his lip. Tried not to groan. It was over.

Jake did not say a word.

“ ‘A qualm has come over me,’ Detective.” He laughed. “That’s R.L. Stevenson.” It was his favorite line from the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story.

Jake lined up the sight on his .357 with the Optimist’s forehead—that tiny space between his eyebrows.

“You see the monsters Southie produces … I am evidence. But then, so are you, Detective. We are not so different.”

Jake looked over his shoulder toward the entrances. He heard something. Back-up was preparing to enter the room. He could hear them stirring. He and the Optimist had ten more seconds alone. The Optimist was ready to pass out.

Jake whispered over the barrel of his weapon, one eye closed, his Magnum still locked on the Optimist’s forehead. “I’m going to do you a favor.”

“Like a wounded horse.” The Optimist reached up, hit the switch over his left shoulder. The projector popped on, blasting a night sky above them onto the ceiling screen. It was as though he was back out on the ocean at midnight, staring up at the open heavens.

Jake closed his eyes. Dropped his head. Not taking the gun off his mark.

He couldn’t do this. He wasn’t a killer. The Optimist was no threat any longer.

“You’re the same as me, Detective …”

The two sets of double doors leading into the planetarium popped open. Matikas called out Jake’s name. Teams of blues dressed in face-shields and body armor, semi-automatic rifles, trekked down the aisles in lines.

“Over here,” the Optimist said, raising a hand as high as he could, speaking with everything he had left. “I want to give myself up.”

As he smiled at Jake, no doubt mocking him this one last time, he whispered, “I win!”

The detective said, “Eat shit and die, asshole.” Then took the shot and hit the psycho square in the forehead, dropping him to the floor, spewing the back of his head into a million little pieces.

THREE WEEKS LATER

93

Sunday, October 6 – 4:16 P.M.

Jake was behind the wheel of an old Chevy S-10 pickup. For October, it was pretty warm out. Enough to make you sweat.

Jake and his passenger rattled down a dirt road, the flimsy wheel wells of the truck leaving a dust cloud along the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee. Country music—some irritating song about a barbecue stain on a white T-shirt—was on the only station the AM radio was able to tune in. Brendan, sitting shotgun, smiled as Jake brushed the kid on top of his head. “You know what they say, buddy. Bad day of fishing is better than any day in school.”

“Right, Daddy.”

Shutting off the radio, Jake pulled into the dirt driveway leading to the cottage. The vacation was almost over.

Father and son got out and slammed the truck doors at the same time, as if they had rehearsed the move. Jake opened the whining screen door to the cottage and Brendan walked in before him underneath Jake’s arm.

Dawn sat at the table reading the Sunday paper, looking over her shoulder, half-smiling. She had a quilt her mother had sent draped over her back. She did not get up. “Catch anything?”

Jake and Brendan took off their jackets. “Nope.”

“Missed a whopper.” Brendan spread his arms out to show his mother how big the fish “probably” was.

“Tellin’ fish tales already, huh, kiddo?”

Jake kissed Dawn on the cheek. She clutched his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. Brendan got himself a Coke.

The letter Mo sent posthumously arrived a day after he blew his brains out. It sat on the table in front of Jake. He had brought it with him, along with his final report. He read the letter several times, but wanted to quote from it in his report. They were scheduled to head back to Boston in two days. Jake needed to be done with this case. It was time to move on.

Mo was no wordsmith, but his points were clear and concise. Jake did the legwork to check out the claims Mo had made in the letter. All of it turned out to be more or less fact.

It was kickbacks, as Jake had originally thought. Mo took money from Mancini Construction, who was responsible for the collapse in the Ted Williams Tunnel that killed two members of the Carmichael family. The problem—besides enormous greed—was the concrete, which was not up to spec. The company had saved hundreds of thousands of dollars using the cheap stuff. Mo made sure all the permits and paperwork were in order by paying off several inspectors. He picked up the bottle again because he knew the feds were in the process of indicting him. HQ had never considered going after Jake, as IA had it under good information that Jake didn’t know what he was doing when he picked up and delivered packages for Mo. You solve the state’s most high-profile serial-killer case and you are entitled to a little leeway and under-the-rug sweeping. Jake wasn’t sure he was continuing in his role as a cop anyway.

Shaking his head for the umpteenth time, Jake couldn’t believe who had helped Mo. The last person Jake would have ever suspected of being on the take was Lieutenant Ray Matikas. Apparently, Matikas knew people who helped fix some of the paperwork. It was Matikas who found Mo dead and walked out of his house with a file the feds later found in Matikas’s car.

Sunshine
.

Dawn got up from the dining room table. Walked to the couch, leaned over Jake’s back. “Whatcha reading?”

“Old news.” Jake said, smiling. “Go take a nap. You need your rest.”

94

Sunday, October 6 –7:21 P.M.

Dickie stood at the podium inside the BPD union hall on Congress Street. “Please hold your applause.” He had to repeat the statement several times. “Please.”

Standing over Dickie’s shoulders, looking sheepish in suits two sizes too small, were Adam Bales and Russel Cannon. Both men were humbled by the loud cheers, slaps on the back and anonymous atta-boys from the crowd. The
Globe
and
Herald
magazine had written about the two men. They were interviewed on the CBS Nightly News and WBZ-TV’s
Crime Night Live
. Heck, even Matt Lauer invited them on the
Today Show
, but they refused.

Neither man cared for all the attention. They were fishermen, first and foremost. That would never change. Their fathers and grandfathers fished. They would teach their children to do the same. It was intertwined in their DNA.

“Dawn Cooper is alive and well today,” Dickie said into the microphone, looking behind him, “because of the heroism displayed by these two gentlemen.” Applause broke out as the men looked at each other. “I want to read something Detective Cooper emailed me this morning. He couldn’t be here. He’s up north with his wife and son. I quote, ‘To Mr. Bales and Mr. Cannon, my wife and I want to express our gratitude for what you did that morning. The only reason you came upon that sinking boat, my wife close to drowning, was because you were out on the ocean doing what you love. You could have driven by, called the Coast Guard and waited it out. You didn’t. You risked your lives to save my wife, same as you do every day out on the Grand Banks for the sake of feeding your families. Thank you.’ ”

The storm off the Maine coastline that morning had sent scores of fishermen further south, toward Boston and the Cape. Bales and Cannon decided, “by a mere stroke of divine providence,” Cannon told ABC News, to head into Boston Harbor, dock for the day, then head back out after the storm broke. They came upon
The Grand Pause
, called it in, then decided, after seeing Dawn struggling to keep her head above water, to make the rescue attempt themselves. There was blood all around Dawn, swirling in salty swells, attracting all sorts of predators. Blue fish, they knew, were more of a threat in Cape Cod Bay than sharks. They needed to act quickly.

Dawn had started cutting through her legs, couldn’t go through with it, and decided to give in to death.

Cannon used the net hoist on their fishing rig to keep
The Grand Pause
afloat while Bales went in with a torch and cut through the handcuffs.

“If I can follow up,” Dickie said, feedback from the microphone squealing throughout the hall. “As I hand these two men our most coveted honor, by leaving you all with something Jake once told me.” After a few inaudible shouts, the audience quieted. “Jake asked me one day if I knew what concupiscence was. I looked at him as though he was speaking Chinese or something.” Some in the crowd laughed. “ ‘It’s the magnetic pull of evil,’ he explained. ‘It’s that devil on your shoulder—the desire to sin that is in every one of us.’ I made some stupid joke that day and … oh, well, you don’t need to hear it, too. My point is. These two men standing here prove that there is also the pull of goodness in many of us. They heard that call and answered. Thank you for hearing me out.”

Standing ovation.