The boy is very happy that his father threw out the kill-traps.
A dead mouse wouldn’t be this much fun.
A dead mouse wouldn’t scream.
3
June 1992
Liam Mulligan’s earliest memory was of his father returning home from his milk delivery route, collapsing into his platform rocker, and pulling out his Comet harmonica. Later, when Mulligan was in his teens, his dad would fold himself into that chair every night and play along with a scratchy Son Seals, Buddy Guy, or Muddy Waters record, even though the chemo had drained him.
That’s how Mulligan learned to love the blues-although no one would have mistaken his father for Little Walter.
Saturday afternoon, Mulligan flipped through his late father’s records, selected Son Seals’s Bad Axe LP, and placed it gently on the family turntable. Then he fetched that old harmonica from its place of honor on the mantel. Settling into that same squeaking rocker, he tapped his left foot to the first few bars of “Don’t Pick Me for Your Fool.” Then he put the harmonica to his lips and honked along with the blues man’s guitar. No one, Mulligan figured, was going to mistake him for Little Walter either.
The album had wound its way to the fifth cut, “Cold Blood,” when his mother stuck her head out of the kitchen. She paused for a moment to listen, the sound of the harmonica conjuring warm memories of her husband.
“Liam? You have a phone call.”
“Who is it?”
“Some guy from the paper.”
Probably the sports editor with a question about the last story Mulligan had turned in. The one about Coach Frank “Happy” Dobbs’s struggle to recruit players for the sad Brown University basketball program. He got up and wandered into the kitchen, where the wall phone was mounted beside the wheezing fifteen-year-old Frigidaire.
“Tell him you’re on vacation,” his mother whispered, and handed him the receiver.
“Mulligan.”
“Sorry to disturb your Saturday afternoon, Mr. Mulligan. Was that your girlfriend who answered the phone?”
“My mother.”
“You live with your mother?”
“She needs help with the rent. Who am I talking to?”
“Ed Lomax, the city editor. Can you give us a hand with a breaking story?”
“Give you a hand with a story?” Ever since middle school, Mulligan had repeated questions while pondering his answer. It was a habit he was trying to break. “I think you got the wrong guy, Mr. Lomax. I work in sports.”
“I’m aware of that, Mulligan, but the summer vacation schedule has left us shorthanded. I asked the sports editor if he could spare someone. He offered you.”
“I just started my vacation.”
“Then reschedule.”
Mulligan didn’t say anything.
“Or if you prefer,” Lomax said, “I could pay you overtime.”
“Overtime? I could use the money. What do you need?”
“There’s been a double murder in Warwick. Hardcastle, our lead police reporter, has been at the scene since this morning, but the police are stonewalling him. Meet him there and see what you can do to help.”
Mulligan wasn’t sure what he’d be able to accomplish aside from standing around looking like a sportswriter. But overtime was overtime.
“Okay. Gimme the address.”
It was nearly five P.M. by the time Mulligan braked his rusting seven-year-old Yugo to a stop a block from the crime scene. That was as close as he could get. The suburban street was clogged with police cars, TV satellite vans, and a medical examiner’s wagon. He was just climbing out when a uniformed officer bellowed at him.
“Get that heap of junk outta here!”
“Please don’t talk to Citation that way, Officer,” Mulligan said. “He’s very sensitive about his looks.”
“You named your Yugo?”
“Yes, sir.”
“After a racehorse?”
“No. After the three speeding tickets I got the first week I owned him.”
“That clunker goes fast enough to get speeding tickets?”
“This little honey can do forty in a school zone.”
The cop chuckled, his face softening a little. “Still gotta move it. No unauthorized vehicles allowed on the street.”
“I’m with The Providence Dispatch.”
“Oh. Got some ID?”
Mulligan pulled out his wallet and flashed his press card.
“Shoulda showed me that in the first place.”
Yellow crime scene tape had been strung across the trunks of four red maples that bordered the front yard of a white-shingled ranch-style house. Outside the tape, a gaggle of print, radio, and TV reporters milled around on the sidewalk. None of them appeared to be doing anything. Mulligan recognized Billy Hardcastle, a rawboned redneck who had hired on with the Dispatch after five years as the police reporter at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
“I’m Mulligan.”
“I know who you are,” Hardcastle said. “You cover sports. You see any sports goin’ on here?”
“Mr. Lomax sent me to give you some help.”
Mulligan extended his right hand. Hardcastle ignored it.
“I told that SOB I don’t need no goddamn help.”
“You don’t?”
“I don’t. And I sure as hell don’t have time to wet-nurse a rookie. Jesus! What the fuck was Lomax thinkin’?”
Mulligan shrugged.
“Now that I’m here, is there something you’d like me to do?”
“Yeah. Leave.”
“What if I talk to the neighbors, see if they know anything?”
“You don’t think I thought of that? I’m way ahead of you, kid.”
“What’s everybody standing around for?”
“The chief’s gonna come out in a few minutes and tell us what the hell’s going on. I expect you to be gone by then.”
“Maybe I could-”
“Maybe you could shut your pie hole and keep the fuck outta my way.”
“Sure. I can do that.”
So Mulligan, who’d never been this close to a murder, kept the fuck outta Hardcastle’s way. He stood silently on the sidewalk and scanned the faces gathered around the house. The cops with their drained eyes. The frightened neighbors standing on the other side of the street. The print and broadcast journalists hungry for a headline. Hardcastle was right. He didn’t belong here.
Forty minutes dragged by before Chief Walter Bennett of the Warwick PD strode out the front door of the murder house and approached the police line. Reporters shouted questions. The chief held up both hands to silence them.
“Here’s what I can tell you. We have two victims, Becky Medeiros, twenty-eight, of this address, and her four-year-old daughter, Jessica. Next of kin has been notified, so it’s okay to report the names. We have a suspect in custody. That is all I am prepared to say at this time.”
As he turned away, reporters hurled questions.
“When were they killed?”
“Who discovered the bodies?”
“Were they shot?”
“Did you recover the murder weapon?”
“Were drugs involved?”
The chief turned back to face them.
“They were killed sometime late last night or early this morning. Everything else is still under investigation.”
“Hey, Chief!” Hardcastle shouted. “The neighbors say Becky’s live-in boyfriend, Walter Miller, was taken away in handcuffs this morning. Can you confirm that he’s your suspect?”
“We are still in the preliminary stages of our investigation,” Bennett said, his narrowed eyes locked on Hardcastle. “If you print that name, you will never get so much as a head nod from anyone in this department. Do I make myself clear?”