Chapter 22
I wasn’t sure if what I was doing qualified as a working vacation. But my chief wasn’t too pleased about me putting in for one just when the task force was getting into full swing, if you can call a bunch of guys following one dead lead after another and literally chasing ghosts “full swing.” Luckily, he knew about the hard time Beatrice and I had had after Chaz’s death and everyone in the department knew that she often suffered from depression for which no pharmaceutical company had developed a pill. So he had no choice but to accept my half-true excuse that I was taking vacation for personal reasons.
Strictly speaking, I was telling the truth in a warped sort of way. For some reason, and maybe Chaz has something to do with this, the Moss kid just had a way of getting under my skin and if anything had happened to him after everything that had already happened to him, I would take it very personally, indeed. I didn’t feel the need to justify that. All the same, I hated myself a little for using Chaz or at least leading my coworkers and superiors into believing that his abrupt death and its belated effect on my wife and me was the reason I had to take a week off.
I knew exactly where to find the kid after they took off with him in Quincy. On Halloween night I bribed a bellhop to call me if he saw anyone suspicious enter the hotel or the penthouse and I went back to my office to find a message from him waiting for me. When I called him on his cell, the bellhop said he saw a tall black guy, “a smoking hot blonde with a nice rack” and some Emo kid. I’m glad he called me but on reflection I’m wondering which one he considered suspicious in a five star hotel: The kid with the Emo hairdo, the hot blonde with the big tits or the black guy.
Whatever his reason for calling me, I couldn’t believe my good luck. When I told the tall kid in the organ grinder getup to tip me off to anyone suspicious (he held out his hand, apparently not happy that I crossed his palm with just my calling card), I wasn’t thinking of anyone from the government. Hell, back on Halloween, I didn’t know any of the three existed. But when you’re stymied with a case that doesn’t want to be solved, sometimes it’s best to go back to basics, like the elementary rule of criminology of the criminal always returning to the scene of the crime (which isn’t even remotely true, by the way, even if you take into consideration all the home games played by the Red Sox since the ’86 World Series or the trips Bush made to Iraq).
So far I was one for one and that alone emboldened me to push my luck and to keep following the kid. I knew they were planning on taking him to the mother ship and I was bound and determined to hitchhike on the tractor beam. The only problem was getting into their headquarters without being seen or recognized, especially since both Laura and Blood had already met me.
Then I realized that may be immaterial as I saw the three of them walk out of the front door of the Ritz Carlton.
I looked at Laura as we came down the elevator. Oliver Blood was standing to my right and I glanced at his fuzzy reflection of the shiny gold doors. I wanted to talk to my sister in private ‘cuz I was still way short of trusting this Blood dude enough so that I could comfortably rap with Laura in the open. Besides, a ghost at that café told me I couldn’t trust him. I never saw that ghost before or since but they generally don’t lie like we living folks do.
The double doors parted and we took a few steps before I deliberately stepped on one of my shoelaces and undid the knot. I bent down knowing that Laura would stop. Blood took a couple of more steps before he realized we weren’t with him and he stopped and turned around.
“Go on ahead. I have to retie my shoe.” He looked at Laura and slowly walked down the lobby but stayed clear of the revolving door. I looked up at Laura as I fooled around with my laces. “Mom and Dad aren’t coming, are they?”
Laura sighed and looked at Blood, who sat down while keeping an eye on us. She partly turned her back to him so he couldn’t read her lips. “No, Adam, they’re not.”
“So when am I gonna see them again?”
“I don’t know.” Looking at Blood again. “Look, Bro, Oliver didn’t want me to tell you this so soon but we had to take Mom and Dad into protective custody.”
“What?!” I had to remind myself to continue fiddle-fucking with my shoelaces. “Waddya mean, ‘protective custody’? Protect them from what?”
“We had to take them to a safe house. Just as a precaution.”
“Why? Where are they?”
“Just as a precaution, Honey. No one’s threatened them. But after what happened to the Christiansons, we can’t take chances.”
“So where the fuck are they?” I looked up at that Blood dude and, yep, he was still staring at us like we were a hooker and a john and he was the hotel dick. I switched to the other shoe to buy us some more time.
“I… I’m sorry, Hun, I can’t tell you that.”
“You’re not…?” I lowered my voice, kept my head down and hoped my long bangs hid the anger on my face. “You won’t tell me where you stashed our own mother and father?”
“Adam, it’s for your and their own good. It’s best you don’t know. That way they can’t get their location from you.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“Whoever.” Now I know why it drives my Mom crazy every time I saw “Whatever” to her. Somehow, I knew my sister was talking about that Dietrich asshole who obviously sent Field Marshall Yodel to off the Christiansons just to make a point to me. “Look, if it makes you feel any better, I don’t know, either. That way, nobody can use me to get to them, either.”
“’Cuz they’re my Achilles heel, right?”
“Exactly. And your reaction to this is the reason Oliver didn’t want you to know about this so soon. But Mom and Dad are just fine. We have them in one of the safest, most secluded safe houses in the country.”
Blood got up from the chair and began walking toward us again. I tied my right sneaker with the blood stain on the instep and got up. I tossed my bangs out of my eyes and gave her a blank stare that only she could decipher. It’s the kind of sociopathic look that I give someone just before I fuck ‘em good. I gave Oliver the same look as I passed him.
I was parked in my Crown Vic on the other side of the toney Mass Ave and 45 minutes into playing a game called, “Who’s Got an Older Shitbox Than Me?” The count was somewhere at zero when I saw the Moss kids and Oliver Blood materialize from the revolving door. On account of those ridiculous bangs and the traffic that intermittently obscured my view, I couldn’t make out Adam’s face that well. But his body language and the way he set his mouth all but convinced me that he wasn’t too thrilled about something.
I began to wonder where their parents were and if that had anything to do with how grim he looked. After all, the kid was at first the prime suspect then a material witness in a double homicide that practically called for two body bags and two bowling bags. Even though the kid was now 18, he was still living at home and you’d think his folks, after hearing about it, would want to have a word or two with the pertinent police authorities. Unless Elle Moss and her creepy boss whisked them somewhere else, which would make the Moss kid’s involvement a little more interesting.
Then Adam tossed his bangs out of his face, immediately locked eyes with me even across four lanes of busy traffic and completely freaked out.
I knew that Laura and her boss both met Coffey but as far as I knew, neither of them had any clue what car he drove. But when I threw my hair out of my eyes I just happened to see him across Mass Ave in his shitbox. Blood and Laura were in front of me and I just somehow knew it wouldn’t be cool if they saw him, too. So, good idea or bad, I did the only thing I could think of on the spot- I spazzed out in front of about a hundred strangers, my sister and her boss.
“Leave me the fuck alone!” I screamed. It’s kinda fucked up but Laura and Blood were almost the only two people who bothered to pay any serious attention to me.
“Adam, what’s going on?” my sister asked while looking around. Not that she would’ve seen anything even if I was seeing ghosts. The truth is, I hadn’t seen one since Commandant Yodel flew through the Christianson’s ceiling after offing the whole fucking family. I don’t know what creeped me out more- When my personal space became Ghost Central or when they avoid me.
“It’s… it’s them!” I yelled, pointing every which way but where Coffey was parked. I was hoping my act wouldn’t make him sit there and gawk at me but make him move so that Laura and Blood wouldn’t see him. “Get away from me!” Oliver suddenly appeared and grabbed my arm like a vise.
“We’ve got to get him out of here. He’s exposed.”
“Adam, Honey, who is it? What do you see?”
“I… I dunno. I never saw them before.”
“We can ask him later, Moss. Let’s move.” He pushed me toward some shiny black SUV near the hotel entrance and shoved me in the back seat. Laura then slid next ti me. As Blood got behind the wheel and turned the key, I looked across the street. Coffey was gone.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
The Bone Bridge: Chapter 21
Chapter 21
(The Boston Ritz Carlton)
It kinda creeped me out that Oliver Blood would rent a room in the same hotel where 53 people croaked just last month. I told myself not to look at the pavement as we walked toward the front entrance but I did, anyway. Lucky for me they managed to hose all the blood off the sidewalk. Otherwise I would’ve ralphed all over Greater Boston.
This is where Blood was staying during his time in Massachusetts and, in a way, it made perfect sense. I was sorry that Coffey wasn’t able to go along. For some reason, I feel better when he’s near me. He gives me a sense of security that I just don’t get with my folks or even Laura, now that I know what kinda shit she does for a living.
“Why wouldja wanna stay here, dude?” I asked him as we waited for the elevator to take us to the 10th floor.
“It makes perfect sense,” he said and my sister nodded when I looked at her. But I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about. If what Laura was hinting was true about ghosts being responsible for the mass suicide, then what chance would Blood have of collecting evidence that the cops wouldn’t already get? I mean, it’s not like ghosts leave fingerprints, foot prints or DNA at crime scenes.
We stepped into the elevator and listened to some schmaltzy song and Blood was humming, “…and when she passes, each one she passes goes… da dee dum… I never could memorize all the lyrics to that song. You guys know how the rest of it goes?” Laura and I both silently gawked at him.
Ding!
We walked to room 1012 and he stopped to fish out his passkey. He swiped the card and the door clicked and opened. It was pretty ritzy (hence the name of the hotel, I guess) and was way better than any of the rooms my folks got when we used to drive down to Miami almost every winter to see our mom’s folks while Laura and I were growing up.
“Make yourself at home, Adam. Can I get you something?” He pointed to a mini fridge in the room.
“Sure. Do you have iced coffee in there?”
“Well, lemma check,” and he rummaged around for a minute and pulled out a small bottle of Starbucks iced coffee “Well, waddya know?” He walked across the big room and handed it to me.
“Thanks. How much is this room settin’ you back?” I asked as I popped the cap off.
“Not a cent. Uncle Sam pays for it all.”
“In other words, we, the taxpayers,” Laura reminded us as she walked past me to put her jacket on the bed. “Nothing’s free, guys.”
“Alright, I stand corrected,” Oliver said with a fake bow. He popped open a diet Coke, although I don’t know why he’d need it. The dude’s about as skinny as me. “Please, have a seat.”
Laura pulled up a couple of chairs for us to sit on. “Alright, I know it’s not gonna be easy for you, kid, but you need to tell us what happened in that house. Don’t forget any details. There’s no such thing as a small or trivial detail. But before you start…”
He pulled some big-ass pen out of his jacket pocket, pressed a tiny button on it and these thin red lasers flared out from the tip almost like an umbrella that extended from one side of the room to the other. All these little red dots slithered up and down all four walls. Blood held it high and passed it low while looking at a little green light on the shaft, especially when he got near the phones, ventilation grills, lamps, basically anywhere you could stick a bug. Laura watched him closely like she’d seen him do this shit before. I’ve never seen anything like that before and didn’t know you could use lasers like that. I thought they were just made for Pink Floyd light shows.
“OK, we’re all set,” he said as the light on his pen went out and he clicked the end with his thumb and the fucking thing actually was a pen. He pulled a small notebook out of his blazer and began writing something. “Now, tell me exactly what happened.”
I looked down at my sneakers and stared at the Christiansons’ blood, almost wishing the cops hadn’t given me my shoe back.
(Four hours ago)
“There’s no sense in trying to warn them about me. They cannot see or hear me,” the Nazi said.
“Who are you?”
“Henry Christianson.”
This Nazi dude would’ve set my teeth on edge even if I wasn’t Jewish. But I am and of course I’d heard all the stories of what the Nazis did to our people during World War II. I guess it’s the kinda reaction an African American person has when they see someone wearing Klan robes. Just seeing that uniform, hearing that accent almost, I dunno, put in my head memories of a Holocaust that even my parents were too young to live through. Details came and went, almost like he was some old black and white TV image that wasn’t ever quite right. But I could make out every detail on his uniform including his medals, ribbons and an Iron Cross.
“I am Doctor Heinrich Jodl. And you must be… Adam Moss.”
“How do you know my name, dude?”
“You told us your name, son.”
OK, this was seriously weirding me out. Hardly any ghosts had ever mentioned me by name. None of them had ever known or called me by my full name. The twins had risen from the love seat like they knew before me what was going to happen and maybe they did. Because the next thing I knew, they both began screaming and shot toward the Nazi with impossible speed. As fast as they were, though, this Yodel asshole was even faster.
“Son, are you alright?”
He sliced through the air with that scalpel and caught one of the twins across her stomach. I never knew that ghosts could feel pain and she was definitely in pain. She grabbed her gut, spazzed out in midair then disappeared, leaving the twin with the ponytail alone with this fucking psycho. If what my sister said about this dick was right, then he’s been dead for about 65 years and is probably better at fighting and shit than these girls who’ve only been dead since last year. I was hoping that defending their parents would give them the edge.
“Adam? Who are you talking to? And what are you looking at?” I forgot all about the Christiansons as this silent war was going on behind them. “Son, are you alright?” The father looked at his wife like he was about to ask her to call the guys with the butterfly nets.
“We have to get out of here. Now.” I shot up from the chair across from them.
“Adam, what is going on with you?” They both looked behind them to what I was seeing.
“Dude, if I were you, I’d get outta here, now.” Jodl, too, had turned invisible but I felt a cold hand on my right shoulder shove me down into the chair. I honestly couldn’t get back up. Then the other twin appeared, still clutching her stomach and the other one got behind the Nazi and they both flew circles around him. This Yodel creep now had a scalpel in each hand and he began spinning right behind the couch like one of those fucking things you see in blenders. The twins screamed in agony and they disappeared in pieces. The motherfucker shredded them. I never knew you could do that to ghosts. And I guess no one had ever thought that bad ghosts could injure and even kill the good ones.
“There, that’s better.” By now he’d stopped and repositioned himself behind the Christiansons who, for some fucked up reason, didn’t seem any more capable of getting up from their sofa as I was from their chair. But them not getting up looked voluntary, which just drove me crazier.
“Please, get up. He’s gonna kill you!”
“What? Who’s going to kill us?”
“Young man, I think it’s time you left,” Mr. Christianson said as he finally began getting up from the sofa. But like I would tell Coffey later, Yodel was faster. A lot faster. The scalpel slit his throat and blood sprayed out on my right sneaker before his wife even knew what was going on. In fact, I screamed before she did.
“Come on, stop it! Why’re you doing this?”
“To send a message,” the bastard said before he nearly decapitated Mrs. Christianson. Her scream turned into a gurgle then a death rattle.
“He killed the twins?” Blood looked at me like I was a ghost and I hate it when people look at me like that. That’s why I try not to tell too many people about my glimpses. He looked past my shoulder at my sister. “Even I never knew they could do that.”
“Look, I dunno if he actually killed them, alright? But I can tell you that he fucked them up both pretty good. They were screaming in pain.” I shook my head and looked at my bloody sneaker again. “And, trust me, dude, you don’t ever wanna hear a ghost scream for any reason, especially out of pain.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Blood said.
“I wonder why Jodl left you alive…” Laura said behind me. I turned to her.
“Because he wanted me to tell somebody. Maybe you guys.”
“Or maybe because he was told to keep you alive,” Blood said, flipping his notebook closed.
“Told by who?”
“Hans Dietrich,” Laura said. I looked at Blood and he was looking at his leather loafers like he was trying to avoid my eyes. “Honey, I’m afraid we’ll have to take you into protective custody.”
“What? Hey, look, I didn’t sign up for this, guys. If he wanted me dead, he would’ve killed me.”
“He kept you alive for a reason, Adam. Or maybe killing the Christiansons was a warning of some sort.”
“Warning me not to do what?”
“What you’re already doing,” Laura said.
“What am I doing?” I asked her but Blood beat her to the answer.
“Developing,” he said.
(The Boston Ritz Carlton)
It kinda creeped me out that Oliver Blood would rent a room in the same hotel where 53 people croaked just last month. I told myself not to look at the pavement as we walked toward the front entrance but I did, anyway. Lucky for me they managed to hose all the blood off the sidewalk. Otherwise I would’ve ralphed all over Greater Boston.
This is where Blood was staying during his time in Massachusetts and, in a way, it made perfect sense. I was sorry that Coffey wasn’t able to go along. For some reason, I feel better when he’s near me. He gives me a sense of security that I just don’t get with my folks or even Laura, now that I know what kinda shit she does for a living.
“Why wouldja wanna stay here, dude?” I asked him as we waited for the elevator to take us to the 10th floor.
“It makes perfect sense,” he said and my sister nodded when I looked at her. But I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about. If what Laura was hinting was true about ghosts being responsible for the mass suicide, then what chance would Blood have of collecting evidence that the cops wouldn’t already get? I mean, it’s not like ghosts leave fingerprints, foot prints or DNA at crime scenes.
We stepped into the elevator and listened to some schmaltzy song and Blood was humming, “…and when she passes, each one she passes goes… da dee dum… I never could memorize all the lyrics to that song. You guys know how the rest of it goes?” Laura and I both silently gawked at him.
Ding!
We walked to room 1012 and he stopped to fish out his passkey. He swiped the card and the door clicked and opened. It was pretty ritzy (hence the name of the hotel, I guess) and was way better than any of the rooms my folks got when we used to drive down to Miami almost every winter to see our mom’s folks while Laura and I were growing up.
“Make yourself at home, Adam. Can I get you something?” He pointed to a mini fridge in the room.
“Sure. Do you have iced coffee in there?”
“Well, lemma check,” and he rummaged around for a minute and pulled out a small bottle of Starbucks iced coffee “Well, waddya know?” He walked across the big room and handed it to me.
“Thanks. How much is this room settin’ you back?” I asked as I popped the cap off.
“Not a cent. Uncle Sam pays for it all.”
“In other words, we, the taxpayers,” Laura reminded us as she walked past me to put her jacket on the bed. “Nothing’s free, guys.”
“Alright, I stand corrected,” Oliver said with a fake bow. He popped open a diet Coke, although I don’t know why he’d need it. The dude’s about as skinny as me. “Please, have a seat.”
Laura pulled up a couple of chairs for us to sit on. “Alright, I know it’s not gonna be easy for you, kid, but you need to tell us what happened in that house. Don’t forget any details. There’s no such thing as a small or trivial detail. But before you start…”
He pulled some big-ass pen out of his jacket pocket, pressed a tiny button on it and these thin red lasers flared out from the tip almost like an umbrella that extended from one side of the room to the other. All these little red dots slithered up and down all four walls. Blood held it high and passed it low while looking at a little green light on the shaft, especially when he got near the phones, ventilation grills, lamps, basically anywhere you could stick a bug. Laura watched him closely like she’d seen him do this shit before. I’ve never seen anything like that before and didn’t know you could use lasers like that. I thought they were just made for Pink Floyd light shows.
“OK, we’re all set,” he said as the light on his pen went out and he clicked the end with his thumb and the fucking thing actually was a pen. He pulled a small notebook out of his blazer and began writing something. “Now, tell me exactly what happened.”
I looked down at my sneakers and stared at the Christiansons’ blood, almost wishing the cops hadn’t given me my shoe back.
(Four hours ago)
“There’s no sense in trying to warn them about me. They cannot see or hear me,” the Nazi said.
“Who are you?”
“Henry Christianson.”
This Nazi dude would’ve set my teeth on edge even if I wasn’t Jewish. But I am and of course I’d heard all the stories of what the Nazis did to our people during World War II. I guess it’s the kinda reaction an African American person has when they see someone wearing Klan robes. Just seeing that uniform, hearing that accent almost, I dunno, put in my head memories of a Holocaust that even my parents were too young to live through. Details came and went, almost like he was some old black and white TV image that wasn’t ever quite right. But I could make out every detail on his uniform including his medals, ribbons and an Iron Cross.
“I am Doctor Heinrich Jodl. And you must be… Adam Moss.”
“How do you know my name, dude?”
“You told us your name, son.”
OK, this was seriously weirding me out. Hardly any ghosts had ever mentioned me by name. None of them had ever known or called me by my full name. The twins had risen from the love seat like they knew before me what was going to happen and maybe they did. Because the next thing I knew, they both began screaming and shot toward the Nazi with impossible speed. As fast as they were, though, this Yodel asshole was even faster.
“Son, are you alright?”
He sliced through the air with that scalpel and caught one of the twins across her stomach. I never knew that ghosts could feel pain and she was definitely in pain. She grabbed her gut, spazzed out in midair then disappeared, leaving the twin with the ponytail alone with this fucking psycho. If what my sister said about this dick was right, then he’s been dead for about 65 years and is probably better at fighting and shit than these girls who’ve only been dead since last year. I was hoping that defending their parents would give them the edge.
“Adam? Who are you talking to? And what are you looking at?” I forgot all about the Christiansons as this silent war was going on behind them. “Son, are you alright?” The father looked at his wife like he was about to ask her to call the guys with the butterfly nets.
“We have to get out of here. Now.” I shot up from the chair across from them.
“Adam, what is going on with you?” They both looked behind them to what I was seeing.
“Dude, if I were you, I’d get outta here, now.” Jodl, too, had turned invisible but I felt a cold hand on my right shoulder shove me down into the chair. I honestly couldn’t get back up. Then the other twin appeared, still clutching her stomach and the other one got behind the Nazi and they both flew circles around him. This Yodel creep now had a scalpel in each hand and he began spinning right behind the couch like one of those fucking things you see in blenders. The twins screamed in agony and they disappeared in pieces. The motherfucker shredded them. I never knew you could do that to ghosts. And I guess no one had ever thought that bad ghosts could injure and even kill the good ones.
“There, that’s better.” By now he’d stopped and repositioned himself behind the Christiansons who, for some fucked up reason, didn’t seem any more capable of getting up from their sofa as I was from their chair. But them not getting up looked voluntary, which just drove me crazier.
“Please, get up. He’s gonna kill you!”
“What? Who’s going to kill us?”
“Young man, I think it’s time you left,” Mr. Christianson said as he finally began getting up from the sofa. But like I would tell Coffey later, Yodel was faster. A lot faster. The scalpel slit his throat and blood sprayed out on my right sneaker before his wife even knew what was going on. In fact, I screamed before she did.
“Come on, stop it! Why’re you doing this?”
“To send a message,” the bastard said before he nearly decapitated Mrs. Christianson. Her scream turned into a gurgle then a death rattle.
“He killed the twins?” Blood looked at me like I was a ghost and I hate it when people look at me like that. That’s why I try not to tell too many people about my glimpses. He looked past my shoulder at my sister. “Even I never knew they could do that.”
“Look, I dunno if he actually killed them, alright? But I can tell you that he fucked them up both pretty good. They were screaming in pain.” I shook my head and looked at my bloody sneaker again. “And, trust me, dude, you don’t ever wanna hear a ghost scream for any reason, especially out of pain.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Blood said.
“I wonder why Jodl left you alive…” Laura said behind me. I turned to her.
“Because he wanted me to tell somebody. Maybe you guys.”
“Or maybe because he was told to keep you alive,” Blood said, flipping his notebook closed.
“Told by who?”
“Hans Dietrich,” Laura said. I looked at Blood and he was looking at his leather loafers like he was trying to avoid my eyes. “Honey, I’m afraid we’ll have to take you into protective custody.”
“What? Hey, look, I didn’t sign up for this, guys. If he wanted me dead, he would’ve killed me.”
“He kept you alive for a reason, Adam. Or maybe killing the Christiansons was a warning of some sort.”
“Warning me not to do what?”
“What you’re already doing,” Laura said.
“What am I doing?” I asked her but Blood beat her to the answer.
“Developing,” he said.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
The Bone Bridge- Chapter 20
(The Christianson Home, Quincy, MA)
By the time I got to the Christianson home, Adam was a sight to behold. He was hunched over in a chair wearing just one sneaker because the other had been impounded as evidence. Ordinarily, I would’ve been a fish out of water because Quincy was way out of my jurisdiction. To the Quincy PD, I was no better than a civilian but the fact that Adam had called me from a house phone to tell me what had happened put me squarely in the middle of this. When the poor kid called me at my office in Boston and gave me his hysterical statement over the phone, I immediately called the Quincy PD and let them take over while I hightailed it north.
It couldn’t have looked any worse for the poor kid and while I didn’t know whether to believe him, all I knew for sure was that he didn’t do it. Adam sat on the couch opposite the bodies, which had been covered up but not moved. With his one shoeless foot, he looked tinier and more fragile than when he woke up from that coma.
“Adam, what happened?” He just told me what happened and sort of how it happened but he was crying and screaming over the phone and I couldn’t make out half what he was saying.
“He was so fast, Detective Coffey. He was so Goddamned fast.” He never looked up at me but just kept rocking back and forth.
“Who was? Who did this?”
“Hey!” I heard from across the living room. “Who the fuck are you? Who the fuck is this? Hey, put down the fuckin’ donuts and someone tell me who the hell this guy is?” I took it to be the lead detective on the case, some tall, slightly overweight guy with too much gel in his hair. His face was almost as red as the shag carpet under us.
I guess I committed a breach of protocol and didn’t give the lead dick the courtesy of a heads up before approaching the kid. In his mind, he’d be the lead suspect, at least a material witness, and he didn’t appreciate some bozo coming out of left field and interrogating his collar, even though I was the bozo who phoned it in to them. As I did when I got to the front door, I pulled my badge and showed it to him.
“Boston PD? A little outta your jurisdiction, ain’tcha, Coffey?”
“Don’t forget, I’m the one who called in this 187. The kid called me.”
“You know him?”
“Yeah. He’s helping me with another case.”
“Another case? Did he wax another family in your back yard?” Adam looked like he was ready to burst into tears and anger began rising up inside me like a wellspring.
“Whatever happened to ‘innocent until proven guilty’? Does this kid look like a killer to you?”
“I don’t know, hot shot. Why don’t you tell me what a killer’s supposed to look like? It would make our jobs a fuck of a lot easier.”
“From where I’m standing, Detective Sassoon,” I said, looking at his overly gelled hair, “you couldn’t make your job easier if the killers made appointments and sold ring side seats.”
“Alright, get the fuck…”
“Did you bother looking at the preliminary evidence?”
“We have our CSI guys looking it over right now, hot shot.”
“Can I see the kid’s sneaker?”
“Fuck you. You don’t even belong here. Do I have to have my chief call your chief to get you out of here?”
In other words, my Dad can beat up your Dad.
“Just show me the sneaker and I’ll show you what I’m talking about.” The lead detective looked at me sardonically then held out his hand behind him.
“Marv, show me that shoe.” Adam’s sneaker, in a plastic evidence bag, was put into his waiting hand and he passed it to me. “I’m just doing this to humor you and get you the fuck outta here. Don’t take it out.” Then he added condescendingly, “That’s what we call… ‘evidence’.”
I gave him a shitty look and turned the sneaker this way and that and my suspicions were confirmed. “Look at this bloodstain on the carpet,” I said as I squatted down on my haunches and pointed to a peninsular-shaped, still-wet blood stain right in front of Adam’s stocking foot. “Did you measure it? It looks like it’s about half, maybe three quarters of an inch wide.”
“Yeah, so?”
“OK, look at his sneaker. There’s a bloodstain on the toe consistent with the same type of blood, I’m guessing arterial considering how bright it is, and the same width as that arterial spray.”
“So what?”
“That means the kid would’ve had to have been sitting right where he is when the murders took place, not behind the victims or right in front of them as he would have to be but at least four and a half feet away from the victims. Do you see any blood on his hands, on his clothes?”
“That doesn’t prove nothin’! He could’ve had an accomplice. He could’ve washed and changed clothes. He coulda done any number of things.”
“If he changed his clothes, where are the bloody ones? If he had an accomplice, then why did he stay behind and call me from the family’s house phone? Come on, even a neanderthal like you can’t believe that.”
“Alright, that’s it. Get out of here, you fat fuck, before I have you arrested for disturbing a crime scene and tampering with a material witness.” I spread my feet and was about to slug this prick into the next dimension when I heard a female’s voice.
“You won’t do any such thing, Detective O’Brien.” Laura Moss walked into the place as if she’d just passed papers with the Christiansons and flashed her creds. I took note that she got a somewhat wider berth than I had with my shitty Boston PD ID. I never thought I’d be so glad to see her and especially Oliver Blood, who followed Adam’s sister. Blood never even had to reach for his own creds. I assumed the kid called his sister at around the same time he called me and she brought Blood with her before he hopped back on a jet to DC. Considering that he’d had his little coffee klatch with Adam over two days ago, I was surprised that he was still in Massachusetts and not back in our nation’s capitol running his agency. In fact, I was tempted to ask him why he was still hanging around until I reminded myself of two things. One, I wasn’t supposed to know who he was and Two, he and Laura were still mine and Adam’s two best and only bets out of this mess.
Laura went directly to her brother and O’Brien was about to get between them when Laura showed him her ID again and said in a low voice, “This is my kid brother. Back off.” She had her back turned to me but I could imagine the pure venom that must’ve been quivering behind her corneas because when he saw her straining at the leash with the weak link O’Brien backed off and pulled the uniforms away from the immediate area.
“Honey, are you alright? Adam, look at me.”
Adam’s eyes finally locked with his sister’s as if just becoming aware that she was in the house.
“Sweetie, tell me what happened.”
“Where’s Mom and Dad?”
“I called them. They’ll meet up with us later. You’re coming with Oliver and me.”
“Who are you?” Oliver Blood was looking right at me, squinting his large hazel eyes at me in curiosity.
“Detective Ed Coffey, meet my boss Oliver Blood. Oliver, Ed.” She went back to her brother without offering any other explanation as to why we were associated.
“Oh, you’re the Boston city detective on the Ritz task force.” He acted as if he knew about me, which made sense. I’m sure that Laura had reported back everything she’d learned from our skull session.
“Well, I’m just one of several.” Neither one of us offered our hand. We were taking each other’s measure just as he and Adam did a couple of days ago. “May I ask what’s your interest in the Ritz Carlton case?”
“Sure.”
We both let that four letter answer hang between us. The inference was clear: “Sure, you can ask, but will I actually tell you? Ha ha ha.”
It would’ve been easy for me to dismiss Blood as a typical federal prick who looks down on us local yokels as charmingly provincial at best, the kind of prick that wouldn’t think twice about peeing in everyone’s back yard just to mark their territory. But there was something more to this guy than just that. Plus I was thinking of that voice that I’d heard yesterday on Adam’s mp3 file, the disembodied one that said, “Don’t trust him.”
I almost shook my head. I can use my own judgment in human nature without having to be informed by ghost whispers. Still, I couldn’t account for the identity of the person who said it but I got the unshakable sense that whoever it was was talking about Blood. I never had the chance to ask the kid if he got a glimpse of who’d said it.
“Adam, sweetheart, look at me. Who did this?”
“Yodel.”
“Yoda?” O’Brien said as he shambled into the living room? “Who the fuck’s this Yoda guy?”
“Jodl,” Elle corrected him with barely-concealed impatience. “J-O-D-L. How do you know it was Jodl?”
“He was wearin’ a Nazi uniform and he used a scalpel. I could see every detail, even the Iron Cross on his chest.” He looked into his sister’s eyes again. “And he told me who he was. Like he wanted someone to know. Just before he…”
“A Nazi did this? Are you shitting me?”
“Detective, please! If my brother said he saw a man in a Nazi uniform and that he killed these people, then he did.”
“Oh, well, since he’s your kid brother and all, what the fuck. Let’s all just call it a day and go home!”
“Detective, you’re acting very unprofessionally,” Elle said standing up.
“I am? Alright, listen up, Agent Moss: We did some checking up on your brother’s background. Seems he’s already spent time in the Laughing Academy a few years back for, guess what? Cutting himself with a razor. Then he wound up back there again just this past month. I know doin’ background checks on capital crimes suspects looks a little unprofessional on the surface, but…”
“Alright, Detective O’Brien, you made your point. But my brother’s medical history has no bearing on this case.”
“Really, now? Let’s see,” said O’Brien as he warmed up, counting off on his fingers. “He’s the only witness to a double homicide, he’s the only other person in the house and he’s got the victims’ blood all over his shoes. He’s already shown a fondness for sharp-edged weapons and now he’s blaming it on Nazis. And he just got out of a loonie bin. Did I forget anything?’
“Yeah,” said Blood. “The part where we take custody of him, asshole, while you stand there with your greasy thumb stuck up your ass.”
Which is exactly how it worked out after some interdepartmental cockwanding, calls to the mayor of Quincy and more to both state and federal attorneys. Whoever Blood and Adam’s sister were, they had more juice than Ocean Spray and Jamba combined to get Adam sprung from police custody considering how guilty he looked. It wasn’t really a matter that the federal government was taking into protective custody someone about to be charged with a capital crime in a municipal jurisdiction. What it all came out to was whose badge was shiner than whose and mine and O’Brien’s were made out of pewter as far as Moss and Blood were concerned.
By the time I got to the Christianson home, Adam was a sight to behold. He was hunched over in a chair wearing just one sneaker because the other had been impounded as evidence. Ordinarily, I would’ve been a fish out of water because Quincy was way out of my jurisdiction. To the Quincy PD, I was no better than a civilian but the fact that Adam had called me from a house phone to tell me what had happened put me squarely in the middle of this. When the poor kid called me at my office in Boston and gave me his hysterical statement over the phone, I immediately called the Quincy PD and let them take over while I hightailed it north.
It couldn’t have looked any worse for the poor kid and while I didn’t know whether to believe him, all I knew for sure was that he didn’t do it. Adam sat on the couch opposite the bodies, which had been covered up but not moved. With his one shoeless foot, he looked tinier and more fragile than when he woke up from that coma.
“Adam, what happened?” He just told me what happened and sort of how it happened but he was crying and screaming over the phone and I couldn’t make out half what he was saying.
“He was so fast, Detective Coffey. He was so Goddamned fast.” He never looked up at me but just kept rocking back and forth.
“Who was? Who did this?”
“Hey!” I heard from across the living room. “Who the fuck are you? Who the fuck is this? Hey, put down the fuckin’ donuts and someone tell me who the hell this guy is?” I took it to be the lead detective on the case, some tall, slightly overweight guy with too much gel in his hair. His face was almost as red as the shag carpet under us.
I guess I committed a breach of protocol and didn’t give the lead dick the courtesy of a heads up before approaching the kid. In his mind, he’d be the lead suspect, at least a material witness, and he didn’t appreciate some bozo coming out of left field and interrogating his collar, even though I was the bozo who phoned it in to them. As I did when I got to the front door, I pulled my badge and showed it to him.
“Boston PD? A little outta your jurisdiction, ain’tcha, Coffey?”
“Don’t forget, I’m the one who called in this 187. The kid called me.”
“You know him?”
“Yeah. He’s helping me with another case.”
“Another case? Did he wax another family in your back yard?” Adam looked like he was ready to burst into tears and anger began rising up inside me like a wellspring.
“Whatever happened to ‘innocent until proven guilty’? Does this kid look like a killer to you?”
“I don’t know, hot shot. Why don’t you tell me what a killer’s supposed to look like? It would make our jobs a fuck of a lot easier.”
“From where I’m standing, Detective Sassoon,” I said, looking at his overly gelled hair, “you couldn’t make your job easier if the killers made appointments and sold ring side seats.”
“Alright, get the fuck…”
“Did you bother looking at the preliminary evidence?”
“We have our CSI guys looking it over right now, hot shot.”
“Can I see the kid’s sneaker?”
“Fuck you. You don’t even belong here. Do I have to have my chief call your chief to get you out of here?”
In other words, my Dad can beat up your Dad.
“Just show me the sneaker and I’ll show you what I’m talking about.” The lead detective looked at me sardonically then held out his hand behind him.
“Marv, show me that shoe.” Adam’s sneaker, in a plastic evidence bag, was put into his waiting hand and he passed it to me. “I’m just doing this to humor you and get you the fuck outta here. Don’t take it out.” Then he added condescendingly, “That’s what we call… ‘evidence’.”
I gave him a shitty look and turned the sneaker this way and that and my suspicions were confirmed. “Look at this bloodstain on the carpet,” I said as I squatted down on my haunches and pointed to a peninsular-shaped, still-wet blood stain right in front of Adam’s stocking foot. “Did you measure it? It looks like it’s about half, maybe three quarters of an inch wide.”
“Yeah, so?”
“OK, look at his sneaker. There’s a bloodstain on the toe consistent with the same type of blood, I’m guessing arterial considering how bright it is, and the same width as that arterial spray.”
“So what?”
“That means the kid would’ve had to have been sitting right where he is when the murders took place, not behind the victims or right in front of them as he would have to be but at least four and a half feet away from the victims. Do you see any blood on his hands, on his clothes?”
“That doesn’t prove nothin’! He could’ve had an accomplice. He could’ve washed and changed clothes. He coulda done any number of things.”
“If he changed his clothes, where are the bloody ones? If he had an accomplice, then why did he stay behind and call me from the family’s house phone? Come on, even a neanderthal like you can’t believe that.”
“Alright, that’s it. Get out of here, you fat fuck, before I have you arrested for disturbing a crime scene and tampering with a material witness.” I spread my feet and was about to slug this prick into the next dimension when I heard a female’s voice.
“You won’t do any such thing, Detective O’Brien.” Laura Moss walked into the place as if she’d just passed papers with the Christiansons and flashed her creds. I took note that she got a somewhat wider berth than I had with my shitty Boston PD ID. I never thought I’d be so glad to see her and especially Oliver Blood, who followed Adam’s sister. Blood never even had to reach for his own creds. I assumed the kid called his sister at around the same time he called me and she brought Blood with her before he hopped back on a jet to DC. Considering that he’d had his little coffee klatch with Adam over two days ago, I was surprised that he was still in Massachusetts and not back in our nation’s capitol running his agency. In fact, I was tempted to ask him why he was still hanging around until I reminded myself of two things. One, I wasn’t supposed to know who he was and Two, he and Laura were still mine and Adam’s two best and only bets out of this mess.
Laura went directly to her brother and O’Brien was about to get between them when Laura showed him her ID again and said in a low voice, “This is my kid brother. Back off.” She had her back turned to me but I could imagine the pure venom that must’ve been quivering behind her corneas because when he saw her straining at the leash with the weak link O’Brien backed off and pulled the uniforms away from the immediate area.
“Honey, are you alright? Adam, look at me.”
Adam’s eyes finally locked with his sister’s as if just becoming aware that she was in the house.
“Sweetie, tell me what happened.”
“Where’s Mom and Dad?”
“I called them. They’ll meet up with us later. You’re coming with Oliver and me.”
“Who are you?” Oliver Blood was looking right at me, squinting his large hazel eyes at me in curiosity.
“Detective Ed Coffey, meet my boss Oliver Blood. Oliver, Ed.” She went back to her brother without offering any other explanation as to why we were associated.
“Oh, you’re the Boston city detective on the Ritz task force.” He acted as if he knew about me, which made sense. I’m sure that Laura had reported back everything she’d learned from our skull session.
“Well, I’m just one of several.” Neither one of us offered our hand. We were taking each other’s measure just as he and Adam did a couple of days ago. “May I ask what’s your interest in the Ritz Carlton case?”
“Sure.”
We both let that four letter answer hang between us. The inference was clear: “Sure, you can ask, but will I actually tell you? Ha ha ha.”
It would’ve been easy for me to dismiss Blood as a typical federal prick who looks down on us local yokels as charmingly provincial at best, the kind of prick that wouldn’t think twice about peeing in everyone’s back yard just to mark their territory. But there was something more to this guy than just that. Plus I was thinking of that voice that I’d heard yesterday on Adam’s mp3 file, the disembodied one that said, “Don’t trust him.”
I almost shook my head. I can use my own judgment in human nature without having to be informed by ghost whispers. Still, I couldn’t account for the identity of the person who said it but I got the unshakable sense that whoever it was was talking about Blood. I never had the chance to ask the kid if he got a glimpse of who’d said it.
“Adam, sweetheart, look at me. Who did this?”
“Yodel.”
“Yoda?” O’Brien said as he shambled into the living room? “Who the fuck’s this Yoda guy?”
“Jodl,” Elle corrected him with barely-concealed impatience. “J-O-D-L. How do you know it was Jodl?”
“He was wearin’ a Nazi uniform and he used a scalpel. I could see every detail, even the Iron Cross on his chest.” He looked into his sister’s eyes again. “And he told me who he was. Like he wanted someone to know. Just before he…”
“A Nazi did this? Are you shitting me?”
“Detective, please! If my brother said he saw a man in a Nazi uniform and that he killed these people, then he did.”
“Oh, well, since he’s your kid brother and all, what the fuck. Let’s all just call it a day and go home!”
“Detective, you’re acting very unprofessionally,” Elle said standing up.
“I am? Alright, listen up, Agent Moss: We did some checking up on your brother’s background. Seems he’s already spent time in the Laughing Academy a few years back for, guess what? Cutting himself with a razor. Then he wound up back there again just this past month. I know doin’ background checks on capital crimes suspects looks a little unprofessional on the surface, but…”
“Alright, Detective O’Brien, you made your point. But my brother’s medical history has no bearing on this case.”
“Really, now? Let’s see,” said O’Brien as he warmed up, counting off on his fingers. “He’s the only witness to a double homicide, he’s the only other person in the house and he’s got the victims’ blood all over his shoes. He’s already shown a fondness for sharp-edged weapons and now he’s blaming it on Nazis. And he just got out of a loonie bin. Did I forget anything?’
“Yeah,” said Blood. “The part where we take custody of him, asshole, while you stand there with your greasy thumb stuck up your ass.”
Which is exactly how it worked out after some interdepartmental cockwanding, calls to the mayor of Quincy and more to both state and federal attorneys. Whoever Blood and Adam’s sister were, they had more juice than Ocean Spray and Jamba combined to get Adam sprung from police custody considering how guilty he looked. It wasn’t really a matter that the federal government was taking into protective custody someone about to be charged with a capital crime in a municipal jurisdiction. What it all came out to was whose badge was shiner than whose and mine and O’Brien’s were made out of pewter as far as Moss and Blood were concerned.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
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