‘I’m going to go upstairs, get the fingerprint card and call the ME’s office,’ he said, emphasizing each word. ‘You’re more than welcome to escort me, since I’m getting the feeling you don’t trust me.’
‘I never said I didn’t trust you.’
‘Then can I get off the witness stand and do some work? Or do you want to waste more time grilling me?’
‘Call ops and have them page Castonguay,’ Darby said. ‘I want him here taking the pictures. Tell him I think I found his HERF device.’
32
Jamie sat alone in the living room waiting for the TV commercial to end. She could hear Carter playing with his Spiderman figures upstairs in the bathtub. Michael was still in his room. When the kids came home from camp, Michael had marched straight upstairs and slammed his bedroom door shut. She went to talk to him. He had locked the door. He refused to talk to her and refused to come out for dinner.
She asked Carter what was bothering Michael and Carter just shrugged.
The answering machine provided a clue. She had forgotten to check it when she first returned home.
‘Good afternoon, Miss Russo, this is Tara French, the director of the Babson sports camp here in Wellesley.’ The woman’s polite voice carried a good amount of caution, as if she didn’t quite know how to broach a difficult topic. ‘Please give me a call at your earliest convenience. I’d like to speak to you about –’
Michael, Jamie had thought, deleting the message. Something had happened at camp today. She’d give Michael some time to cool down, then get his version of whatever had happened and speak to the camp director first thing tomorrow morning.
The second message was from Father Humphrey: ‘Jamie, please call me. I’m… I’m worried about you.’
The TV commercial ended. The newsreader for the New England Cable News channel, an ageing man with wiry grey hair and bright white teeth she suspected were dentures, started talking in a serious voice about the lead story, ‘a grisly homicide and shocking discovery in Charlestown at the childhood home of Kevin Reynolds, a former close associate of Boston’s notorious Irish mobster Francis Sullivan’.
Frank Sullivan. Jamie knew the name, of course, but she couldn’t recall anything specific about the man’s legacy beyond suspected murder, extortion and people who suddenly vanished into thin air. She had graduated from the police academy in February of ’92 – nearly a decade after Sullivan’s death. The Irish mob – and the Italian Mafia, for that matter – had been dismantled by the time she had started her first Boston patrols. A year later she had transferred to Wellesley, a town whose greatest threat was the occasional burglary. She met Dan during that year, got married and quit working when she was pregnant with Carter.
The horse-toothed newsreader disappeared as the screen switched to an Asian reporter who was broadcasting live from Charlestown. Jamie could see blinking blue and white police lights on the windows and wet pavement behind the reporter.
The reporter gave a brief rundown of what had happened early this afternoon: ‘Charlestown resident Andrea Fucilla, who lives in an apartment building across the street from the childhood home of Kevin Reynolds, heard gunshots and called the police.’
The screen cut to an elderly woman with olive skin and a crooked nose holding up a pair of thick glasses. She stood under an umbrella but her stringy brown hair was damp from the rain. She spoke in broken English.
‘I was on the phone talking to my daughter when I hear popping sounds like firecrackers. But didn’t think it was firecrackers so I call police.’
‘How did you know the gunshots came from the Reynolds home?’ the reporter asked.
‘I sit by open window smoking my cigarette and hear pop-pop-pop, pop-pop-pop. That’s what I tell police. That and what I saw.’
‘What did you see, Miss Fucilla?’
Jamie felt a sickening dread crawling across her skin.
‘I saw a man come walking out of house,’ the elderly witness said. ‘I didn’t get a good look at his face. His head was tilted down because of the rain. He wore Red Sox windbreaker and baseball hat.’
I saw a man come walking out of house. A man.
Jamie sighed deeply, the tension dissolving inside her chest.
The screen had switched back to the reporter. ‘Police confirmed that a male victim was found shot to death inside the house but won’t release the name or any further details regarding the human remains discovered inside the basement.
‘Mary Sullivan, mother of Kevin Reynolds, died last month. Local residents have spotted Kevin Reynolds in Charlestown during the past few weeks and told us he was getting ready to put his mother’s home up for sale.’
Now a split screen of the reporter and the newsreader.
The newsreader said, ‘Is Kevin Reynolds a suspect?’
‘Police have refused to comment but cited him as a person of interest,’ the reporter replied. ‘They are asking any resident who sees Kevin Reynolds to call.’
The screen switched again to show a photograph of Kevin Reynolds. The picture had been taken some time ago, Jamie thought. Reynolds had a pie-shaped face and pug nose, but his curly hair was brown, not grey. And his clothing was straight out of the eighties: rose-tinted sunglasses and a thick gold chain draped over a white Champion T-shirt worn so tight it showcased his budding man boobs.
A toll-free number flashed across the bottom of the screen. The reporter promised to bring viewers more details as the story developed.
Jamie felt certain Reynolds was one of the men who had murdered her husband. She knew she had to move on him quickly. First, she had to find a way to bring him out of hiding.
She got up from the sofa, wiping her damp palms on her shorts and nursing the idea she’d been mulling over since leaving Charlestown this afternoon. She was about to shut off the TV – she needed to get Carter out of the bathtub – when the newsreader launched into a story outlining Kevin Reynolds’s history with Frank Sullivan.
On the TV screen, a black-and-white mug shot of Frank Sullivan’s first arrest at twenty-two. He had thick and wavy blond hair and wore a trench coat. He held a Boston Police arrest card a few inches below his freshly shaved chin.
He had a scar on his right wrist – and it was of the same size and shape as the one Ben Masters had had.
She blinked, figuring her mind was playing a trick on her. The scar was still there. Same size, same shape.
She shifted her attention to Frank Sullivan’s big ears sticking out from the sides of his head.
Ben had had the same ears.
Now pictures of a younger-looking Sullivan flashed across the TV screen. She was dimly aware of the horse-toothed newsreader saying something about how Sullivan, an only child born in East Boston to a single mother, had started off his career stealing cars before graduating to armed robbery. He was arrested for holding up a bank in Chelsea and served two years in a Cambridge prison.
Next, a surveillance photograph of a much older Francis Sullivan taken, according to the newsreader, the month before he died during a botched FBI raid on Boston Harbor. Sullivan bald on top, the hair on the sides of his head completely grey. Big ears and a wrinkled curtain of flesh dangling underneath his chin.
Ben had had the same rooster neck when she’d seen him inside her house. He’d had the exact same scar and –
Francis Sullivan is dead, a voice whispered.
Ben has the same ears – and that scar on his wrist, it’s the exact same size and pattern.
It’s a coincidence, Jamie.