Eight miles south, Gloria rolled up to her house in Warwick, parked in the garage, went through the connecting door to the kitchen, and dropped her camera bag on the kitchen table. She was proud of herself tonight, proud that she’d stood in the rain without panicking to shoot some first-rate fire photos. She walked through the house, checking the locks on all the doors and windows. Then she skipped up the stairs, pulled off her clothes, and tossed them on the floor. She dropped into bed and immediately fell asleep.
Mulligan headed for the half-bath to drain the evening’s coffee from his bladder. When he was done, he roused Mason and told him to go upstairs. Then he went out through the sliding glass doors, checked the backyard, came back inside, rechecked all the locks, and turned off the air-conditioning.
In Warwick, ten miles to the south, Andy Jennings’s two big dogs snored on his living room carpet. He sat on the floor beside them, cleaning their namesake, a Model 460 V Smith & Wesson. His other pistol, a nine-millimeter Walther, was already cleaned and loaded. When he was done, he loaded the Smith & Wesson with hollow-points, bade the pooches good night, picked up both pistols, and tiptoed up the stairs to the bedroom where Mary was sleeping. He put the guns on the bedside table and slipped under the covers.
Fifteen minutes later, he bolted awake. The dogs were barking.
Mulligan put his.45 down on the coffee table. Exhausted, he stretched out on the couch and listened to the house. All he could hear was rain battering the windows.
Suddenly, he was on the death plane again, but this time something was different. At first, he didn’t know what it was. Then one of the blond women’s eyelids fluttered. She opened her mouth to scream.
In Coventry, twelve miles to the west, Tim Zucchi poured himself another cup of black coffee and settled down in front of the TV. His pistol, a nine-millimeter Sturm, Ruger semiauto, lay beside him on an end table. For two weeks now, he’d been going to bed at six P.M., getting up at eleven P.M., and standing guard until dawn. Each night, he TiVo’d all the late night talk shows and then watched them until it was time to go to work.
“Say something funny, asshole,” he told Conan O’Brien. “I need help keeping my eyes open.”
Mulligan startled awake. It wasn’t just the dream that was different. Something was different here, too. The rain sounded louder now. The air stirred as if a window had been opened. He peered into the darkness.
He saw nothing.
After a moment, he sensed something huge padding toward him across the living room carpet. He swung his legs off the couch, picked up his.45, and snicked off the safety.
The gun had a will of its own. It boomed three times before Mulligan made a conscious decision to fire it. The something huge vanished in a red mist.
78
“If you were a better shot, you could have saved the criminal justice system a ton of money,” Chief Hernandez said.
“He’s gonna live?”
“The doctors working on him at Rhode Island Hospital seem to think so. I told them not to work too hard.”
“Where’d I hit him?”
“You put one round in his left shoulder and another in his left lung. The third shot struck a picture of Freyer’s mother on the living room wall. Got the old gal right in the liver.”
It was early Wednesday morning, the sun just coming up. Hernandez and Mulligan were sitting in straight metal chairs on opposite sides of a scarred steel table in a Warwick PD interrogation room. Three detectives, two local and one from the Rhode Island State Police, leaned against once white walls stained yellow with cigarette smoke.
“Diggs was carrying a military-style combat knife with a seven-inch blade,” Hernandez said. “Did you catch a glimpse of it before you fired?”
Mulligan hesitated.
“The smart answer would be yes,” Hernandez said.
“Then yes. Yes, I did.”
“Did he say anything to you?”
“No.”
“But you were afraid for your life?” Hernandez asked, nodding his head to signal the correct answer.
“Yes, Chief. I was afraid for my life.”
“And for the lives of the two people sleeping upstairs?”
“That’s right.”
“Okay, then,” Hernandez said.
“How long are you going to keep me here?”
“In a hurry, are you?”
“I am. I’ve got to get back to the paper. I don’t want to get scooped on my own story.”
“You’re going to be here all day.”
“Aw, shit. What about Mason?”
“He’ll be here all day, too.”
“Sonovabitch!”
“Tell you what,” the chief said. “We’ll keep a twelve-hour lid on this, give the two of you enough time to break the news.”
“Thanks.”
“Under the circumstances, it’s the least we can do.”
“How about a medal?”
“No.”
“A commendation I can hang on my wall?”
“Don’t press your luck.”
79
A week later, Mulligan stepped into the elevator at the Dispatch with five men wearing identical black suits, white dress shirts, and purple ties. Three of them were carrying laptops. One of them got off with Mulligan on the third floor and headed for Lomax’s office. The other four continued on to the upper floors, which housed the treasurer’s and publisher’s offices.
Mulligan walked to his cubicle, checked his messages, and found one from Lomax assigning him to write six obituaries for the next day’s paper. Ninety minutes later, he was banging out the last one:
Herbert “Party Boy” Walker, 57, of 22 Colfax Street, Providence, a patrolman in the Providence Police Department, died yesterday at Miriam Hospital after a long illness.
Walker’s dying wish, according to friends and family, was to make it known that his enthusiastic consumption of cheap whiskey and oxycodone, along with his stubborn refusal to take the advice of his physician, had contributed to his early…
The man in the black suit was leaving the managing editor’s office now. Mason watched him head for the elevator and then wandered over to ask Lomax what was up.
“Strangers are rummaging through the Dispatch looking for loose change,” Lomax said.
“Who are they?”
“A pack of greedy corporate raiders negotiating to buy the paper.”
“From General Communications Holdings International?”
“How the hell did you know?”
“I’m an investigative reporter. I know all kinds of stuff.”
80
On Saturday night, Roomful of Blues, the legendary eight-man Rhode Island band, was on stage at Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel on Washington Street. Chris Vachon, the lead guitar player, was tearing it up behind a new frontman named Phil Pemberton. A veteran of the Boston blues scene, Phil injected soul into the band’s familiar sound, his textured voice alternately aching with tenderness and threatening to wreck the walls.
Mulligan, Gloria, Mason, and Felicia were sharing a table, but not the check. Mason was springing for their night on the town. Felicia, who’d shed her lawyerly garb for party duds, wiggled to the band’s insistent groove.
“Don’t you hear that?” she squealed, clutching at Mason’s hand. “How can you sit still?”
Under the table, Mulligan’s right Reebok was keeping time. Gloria stared at him, surprised by his rhythm, and tried to remember the last time she’d danced. Mason, looking somewhat distracted, held on to Felicia’s hand and smiled in her direction as Phil launched into “Ain’t Nothin’ Happenin’.” How wrong he was, Mason thought.