Darkness, Take My Hand Read online

  I took the seat beside Devin, and Angie took the one beside Oscar and stole one of his fries.

  I looked at Devin’s cheeseburger. “They just lean the cow against a radiator?”

  He growled and stuffed some more in his mouth.

  “Devin, you know what red meat does to your heart, never mind your bowels?”

  He wiped his mouth with a cocktail napkin. “You turn into one of those holistic, health PC douchebags while I wasn’t looking, Kenzie?”

  “Nope. But I saw one picketing out front.”

  He reached for his hip. “Here. Take my gun and shoot the prick. See if you can pop a mime while you’re at it. I’ll see it gets written up right.”

  A throat cleared behind me and I looked into the bar mirror. A man sat in a shadowed booth just over my right shoulder.

  He wore a dark suit and dark tie, a crisp white shirt and a matching scarf. His dark hair was the color of polished mahogany. He sat stiffly in the booth, as if his spine had been replaced with pipe.

  Devin jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Patrick Kenzie, Angela Gennaro, meet FBI Special Agent Barton Bolton.”

  I turned on my barstool and Angie turned on hers and we both said, “Hi.”

  Special Agent Barton Bolton said nothing. He looked each of us up and down like a concentration camp commandant trying to decide if we were best fit for work or extermination, then shifted his gaze to a point somewhere over Oscar’s shoulder.

  “We have a problem,” Oscar said.

  “Could be a small problem,” Devin said, “could be a big one.”

  “And it is?” Angie said.

  “Let’s all sit together.” Oscar pushed his plate away.

  Devin did the same and we all joined Special Agent Barton Bolton in the booth.

  “What about Gerry?” I said, watching him clear the plates off the bar.

  “Mr. Glynn’s already been questioned,” Bolton said.

  “Ah.”

  “Patrick,” Devin said, “your card was found in Kara Rider’s hand.”

  “I told you how it got there.”

  “And when we were working on the presumption that Micky Doog or one of his puke friends had killed her because she wouldn’t blow him or whatever, it wasn’t a problem.”

  “Your presumption has changed?” Angie said.

  “’Fraid so.” Devin lit a cigarette.

  “You quit,” I said.

  “Unsuccessfully.” He shrugged.

  Agent Bolton removed a photograph from his briefcase, handed it to me. It was of a young man, mid-thirties, built like a Grecian statue. He wore only shorts and was smiling at the camera and his upper torso was all hard cuts and coiled muscle, biceps the size of baseballs.

  “Do you know this man?”

  I said, “No,” and handed the photo to Angie.

  She looked at it a moment. “No.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Angie said, “I’d remember that body. Trust me.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Peter Stimovich,” Oscar said. “Actually his full name is The Late Peter Stimovich. He was killed last night.”

  “Did he have my business card too?”

  “Not as far as we know.”

  “Then why am I here?”

  Devin looked across the bar at Gerry. “What did you and Gerry talk about when you came in here a few days ago?”

  “Ask Gerry.”

  “We did.”

  “Wait,” I said, “how do you know I came in here a few days ago?”

  “You’ve been under surveillance,” Bolton said.

  “Excuse me?”

  Devin shrugged. “This is bigger than you, Patrick. A lot bigger.”

  “How long?” I said.

  “How long what?”

  “Have I been watched?” I looked at Bolton.

  “Since Alec Hardiman refused our request to speak with him,” Devin said.

  “So?”

  “When he refused our request,” Oscar said, “he did it by saying you’re the only one he’ll talk to.”

  “Me?”

  “You, Patrick. Only you.”

  17

  “Why’s Alec Hardiman want to talk to me?”

  “Good question,” Bolton said. He waved at the smoke coming from Devin’s cigarette. “Mr. Kenzie, everything said from this point on is absolutely confidential. Understood?”

  Angie and I gave Bolton our best shrugs.

  “Just so we’re clear—if you repeat anything we speak of today, you’ll be charged with Federal obstruction charges carrying a maximum penalty of ten years.”

  “You enjoy saying that, don’t you?” Angie said.

  “What’s that?”

  She deepened her voice. “’Federal obstruction charges.’”

  He sighed. “Mr. Kenzie, when Kara Rider was murdered, she had your card in her hand. Her crucifixion, as you probably know, bore remarkable similarities to the crucifixion of a boy in this neighborhood in 1974. Sergeant Amronklin, you might not know, was a patrolman back then who worked with former Detective Sergeant Glynn and Inspector Hardiman.”

  I looked at Devin. “Did you think Kara’s murder might have been connected to Cal’s the night we saw her body?”

  “I considered the possibility.”

  “But you didn’t say anything to me.”

  “Nope.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “You’re a private citizen, Patrick. It’s not my job to let you in. Besides, I thought it was a hell of a long shot. Just something I kept in the back of my mind.”

  The phone on the bar rang and Gerry picked it up, his eyes on us. “Black Emerald.” He nodded as if he’d expected the caller’s question. “Sorry, no. We’re all closed up here. Plumbing problem.” He closed his eyes for a moment, nodded hurriedly. “You’re so desperate for a drink, try another bar. You better get going.” He looked about to hang up. “What’d I tell you? Closed. I’m sorry, too.”

  He hung up, gave us a shrug.

  “This other victim,” I said.

  “Stimovich.”

  “Right. Was he crucified?”

  “No,” Bolton said.

  “How’d he die?”

  Bolton looked at Devin and Devin looked at Oscar and Oscar said, “Who gives a shit? Tell them. We need all the help we can get before we have more bodies on our hands.”

  Bolton said, “Mr. Stimovich was tied to a wall, his skin removed in strips, and then he was disembowled while he was still alive.”

  “Jesus,” Angie said and blessed herself so quickly I’m not even sure she was aware she did it.

  Gerry’s phone rang again.

  Bolton frowned. “Can you yank that out of the hook for a little while, Mr. Glynn?”

  Gerry looked pained. “Agent Bolton, with all due respect to the dead, I’ll keep my place closed as long as you feel you need it, but I got regulars wondering why my door’s closed.”

  Bolton waived dismissively and Gerry answered the phone.

  After a few seconds of listening, he nodded. “Bob, Bob, listen, we have a plumbing situation. I’m sorry, but I got three inches of water on the floor and…” He listened. “So do what I’m telling you—go to Leary’s or The Fermanagh. Go somewhere. Okay?”

  He hung up, gave us another shrug.

  I said, “How do you know Kara wasn’t killed by someone she knew? Micky Doog? Or a gang initiation rite?”

  Oscar shook his head. “It doesn’t play that way. All her known acquaintances have alibis, including Micky Doog. Plus there’s a whole lot of her time unaccounted for while she was back in the city.”

  “She wasn’t hanging around the neighborhood much,” Devin said. “Her mother had no idea where she went. But she was back in town only three weeks and it wasn’t like she could have made that many acquaintances over in Brookline.”

  “Brookline?” I said, remembering my dream.

  “Brookline. That’s the one place we know she went several times. Credit card receipts from Cityside,
a couple of restaurants around Bryce University.”

  “Jesus,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Nothing. Look, how do you know these cases are connected if the vics were killed in different ways?”

  “Photographs,” Bolton said.

  A block of dry ice melted in my chest.

  “What photographs?” Angie said.

  Devin said, “Kara’s mother had a stack of mail she hadn’t opened in a few days before Kara died. One of them was an envelope, no return address, no note, just a photograph of Kara inside, innocent photo, nothing—”

  Angie said, “Gerry, can I use your phone?”

  “What’s the matter?” Bolton said.

  She was already at the bar, dialing.

  “And the other guy, Stimovich?” I said.

  “No one at his dorm room,” Angie said and hung up, dialed another number.

  “What’s up, Patrick?” Devin said.

  “Tell me about Stimovich,” I said, trying to keep the panic from my voice. “Devin. Now.”

  “Stimovich’s girlfriend, Alice Boorstin—”

  “No one at Diandra’s office,” Angie said and slammed the phone down, picked it up, began dialing again.

  “—received a similar photo of him in the mail two weeks ago. Same thing. No note or return address, just a photo.”

  “Diandra,” Angie said into the phone, “where’s Jason?”

  “Patrick,” Oscar said, “tell us.”

  “I have his class schedule,” Angie said. “He only has one class today and it was over five hours ago.”

  “Our client received a similar photograph weeks ago,” I said. “Of her son.”

  “We’ll be in touch. Stay there. Don’t worry.” Angie hung up the phone. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she said.

  “Let’s go.” I stood up.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Bolton said.

  “Arrest me,” I said and followed Angie out the door.

  18

  We found Jade, Gabrielle, and Lauren dining together in the student union, but no Jason. The women gave us “Who the fuck are you?” looks, but answered our questions. None of them had seen Jason since this morning.

  We stopped by his dorm room, but he hadn’t been by since the previous night. His roommate stood in a haze of pot fumes with Henry Rollins’s pissed-off wail booming through his speakers and said, “Nah, man, I got like no idea where he’d be. ‘Cept with that dude, you know.”

  “We don’t know.”

  “That dude. You know, that, like, dude he hangs out with sometimes.”

  “This dude got a goatee?” Angie said.

  The roommate nodded. “And like the most hollow eyes. Like he ain’t walking among the living. Be a babe if he was a chick, though. Weird, huh?”

  “Dude got a name?”

  “None I ever heard.”

  As we walked back to the car, I could hear Grace asking me a few nights ago, “Are these cases connected in any way?”

  Well now, yeah, they were. So what did that mean?

  Diandra Warren receives a photograph of her son and makes a reasonable logical leap that it’s connected to the Mafia hood she inadvertently angered. Except—she didn’t inadvertently anger him. She was contacted by an imposter, and they met in Brookline. An imposter with a harsh Boston accent and wispy blond hair. Kara Rider’s hair, when I saw it, looked freshly dyed. Kara Rider used to have blonde hair and her credit card receipts put her in Brookline around the same time “Moira Kenzie” had contacted Diandra.

  Diandra Warren had no TV in her apartment. If she read a newspaper, she read The Trib, not The News. The News had plastered Kara’s photograph across page one. The Trib, far less sensationalistic and actually late on the story, hadn’t published a photograph of Kara at all.

  As we reached the car, Eric Gault pulled behind it in a tan Audi. He looked at us with mild surprise as he got out.

  “What brings you kids by?”

  “Looking for Jason.”

  He opened his trunk, began picking up books from a pile of old newspapers. “I thought you’d given up on the case.”

  “There’ve been some new developments,” I said and smiled with confidence I didn’t feel. I looked at the newspapers in Eric’s trunk. “You save them?”

  He shook his head. “I toss them in here, take them to a recycling station when I can’t close the trunk anymore.”

  “I’m looking for one about ten days old. May I?”

  He stepped back. “Be my guest.”

  I pulled back the top News on the pile, found the one with Kara’s photo four down. “Thanks,” I said.

  “My pleasure.” He shut the trunk. “If you’re looking for Jason, try Coolidge Corner or the bars on Brighton Avenue. The Kells, Harper’s Ferry—they’re big Bryce hangouts.”

  “Thanks.”

  Angie pointed at the books under his arm. “Overdue at the library?”

  He shook his head, looked at the stately white and red-brick dorm buildings. “Overtime. In this recession, even us tenured profs have to stoop to tutoring now and again.”

  We climbed into our car, said good-bye.

  Eric waved, then turned his back to us and walked up to the dorms, whistling softly in the gradually cooling air.

  We tried every bar on Brighton Ave., North Harvard, and a few in Union Square. No Jason.

  On the drive to Diandra’s place, Angie said, “Why’d you grab that newspaper?”

  I told her.

  “Christ,” she said, “this is a nightmare.”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  We rode the elevator up to Diandra’s as the waterfront rose, then fell away from us into an overturned bowl of black ink harbor. The apprehension that had been sitting tightly in my stomach for the last few hours expanded and eddied until I felt nauseous.

  When Diandra let us in, the first thing I said was, “This Moira Kenzie, did she have a nervous habit of tucking her hair behind her right ear, even if there was nothing to tuck?”

  She stared at me.

  “Did she?”

  “Yes, but how did you…?”

  “Think. Did she make this weird, sort of laughing, sort of hiccuping sound at the ends of her sentences?”

  She closed her eyes for a moment. “Yes. Yes, she did.”

  I held up The News. “Is this her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Son of a bitch,” I said loudly.

  “Moira Kenzie” was Kara Rider.

  I paged Devin from Diandra’s.

  “Dark hair,” I told him. “Twenty. Tall. Good build. Cleft in his chin. Usually dresses in jeans and flannel shirts.” I looked at Diandra. “Do you have a fax here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Devin, I’m faxing you a photo. What’s the number?”

  He gave it to me. “Patrick, we’ll have a hundred guys looking for this kid.”

  “You get two hundred, I’ll feel better.”

  The fax machine was at the east end of the loft, by the desk. I fed it the photo Diandra had received of Jason, waited for the transmission report, walked back to Diandra and Angie in the living area.

  I told Diandra we were slightly concerned because we’d received conclusive proof that neither Jack Rouse nor Kevin Hurlihy could have been involved. I told her that because Kara Rider had died shortly after impersonating Moira Kenzie, I wanted to reopen the case. I didn’t tell her that everyone who’d received a photo had had loved ones murdered.

  “But he’s okay?” She sat on the couch, tucked her legs under her and searched our faces.

  “As far as we know,” Angie said.

  She shook her head. “You’re worried. That’s obvious. And you’re holding something back. Please tell me what. Please.”

  “It’s nothing,” I said. “I just don’t like it that the girl who impersonated Moira Kenzie and got this whole thing rolling has turned up dead.”

  She didn’t believe me and she leaned forward, her elbows on her knees.
“Every night, no matter what, between nine and nine-thirty, Jason calls.”

  I looked at my watch. Five past nine.

  “Is he going to call, Mr. Kenzie?”

  I looked at Angie. She was peering intently at Diandra.

  Diandra closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she said, “Do either of you have children?”

  Angie shook her head.

  I thought of Mae for a moment.

  “No,” I said.

  “I didn’t think so.” She walked to a window, her hands on the backs of her hips. As she stood there, lights from an apartment in the building next door went out one by one and pools of darkness spread across her blond floor.

  She said, “You never stop worrying. Never. You remember the first time he climbed out of his crib and fell to the floor before you could reach him. And you thought he was dead. Just for a second. And you remember the horror of that thought. When he grows older and rides his bike and climbs trees and walks to school on his own and darts out in front of cars instead of waiting for the light to change, you pretend it’s okay. You say, ‘That’s kids. I did the same thing at his age.’ But always in the back of your throat is this scream, barely suppressed. Don’t. Stop. Please don’t get hurt.” She turned from the window and stared at us from the shadows. “It never goes away. The worry. The fear. Not for a second. That’s the price of bringing life into this world.”

  I saw Mae reaching her hand down by the mouth of that dog, how I’d felt ready to jump, to tear the head off that Scottish terrier if need be.

  The phone rang. Nine-fifteen. All three of us jerked at once, and Diandra crossed the floor in four strides. Angie looked at me and rolled her eyes upward in relief.

  Diandra picked up the phone. “Jason?” she said. “Jason?”

  It wasn’t Jason. That was immediately apparent when she ran her free hand up along her temple and pressed it hard against the hairline. “What?” she said. She turned her head and looked at me. “Hold on.”

  She handed me the phone. “Someone named Oscar.”

  I took the phone from her and turned so that my back was to her and Angie as another set of lights went out in the building beside us and spread the darkness across the floor like liquid while Oscar told me that Jason Warren had been found.