2 in the Hat (16 page)

V
isitors had to check in through security at One Schroeder Plaza
before entering the building. Stepping around the metal detector, Connie nodded to the officer working security at the front entrance. A little after seven, Friday morning, so the lobby was pretty quiet except for the early birds grabbing their breakfast. Angel Alves was one of them, standing outside the cafeteria, holding a cup of coffee, talking with a lieutenant. Connie waited for them to split up. Alves looked like he hadn’t slept.

“What’s up, buddy?” Connie asked. “You look a little rough.”

“Typical evening with Wayne Mooney will do that.”

“Working with Sarge can’t be good for your marriage. Everything all right with Marcy and the twins?”

“Long story,” Alves said.

“I’ve got a meeting with Sergeant Stone in Ballistics,” Connie changed the subject. “Trial prep. Gun case. Miracle of miracles, they found a fingerprint on the clip. Matches the defendant.”

“Who’s the defendant?” Alves was looking over Connie’s shoulder, scanning the lobby.

“Nineteen-year-old kid from Dorchester. Not on anyone’s radar. Got a bad record. Getting arrested with the gun made him a level three ACC. Looking at fifteen years minimum mandatory.”

“Therefore, no plea deal.”

“I offered him a seven to ten in Cedar Junction. Figures he’ll roll the dice, try his luck with the jury.”

“Any issues with the case?”

“A couple. But I got it all figured out.”

“I’m sure you’ve already practiced your closing.”

“I always know my closing before the trial starts. Fewer surprises that way. So what’s going on with the Prom Night case?”

“Connie, I don’t have time right now.”

“Give me the CliffsNotes version.”

“I’ll give you a quick briefing,” Alves glanced at the phone in his hand. Checking the time.

“Reports and crime scene photos.”

“All I need is Mooney catching you rifling through a homicide case file. Sarge walks in while we’re talking, you came to get my advice on your gun case.”

They started down the hall toward the bank of elevators. “You hear about the shooting last night?” Connie asked.

“Stutter Simpson’s kid brother, Junior. Took two in the hat.”

“Could be a case of mistaken identity. That kid looked just like his brother.”

“I couldn’t tell you, Connie. That’s Ray Figgs’s case.”

“I know. I was out there last night. You and I still have the Jesse Wilcox murder. And Stutter is our main suspect, so the murder last night could be related.”

Alves stared straight ahead at the elevator lights. “Figgs has been assigned everything related to that forty. Including Wilcox. You need to talk to him.”

“What the fuck, Angel.” Everything he’d worked for was on the line. “This was
our
case. We had Stutter Simpson in the crosshairs. Now Figgs is going to screw everything up.”

“It’s not my call, Connie. It came down from the commissioner.”

The elevator chimed, the doors opened, and Alves stepped in.

“You didn’t even put up a fight, Angel?”

Alves shrugged his shoulders.

“You too, Angel? White college kids more important than some kids from the neighborhood?”

The elevator doors started to close. Alves put out his hand to hold them open.

“Thanks, pal, but I’ll take the stairs.”

F
iggs took a handful of peanuts from his pocket. He hadn’t spent
much time with Mrs. Simpson. She’d identified her son while he was lying on the sidewalk dying, so there was no need for her to make a formal ID. And last night wasn’t the right time. But now he needed to talk with her. She’d had one whole day to get used to the idea that her son was gone. Stupid thought, that a mother would ever get used to her son being dead.

Making his way up the stairs of the duplex, Figgs checked the number and rang the bell. It took a lot of rings and a lot of time before the door swung open. Before yesterday, Junior Simpson’s mother was probably an attractive woman, still on the younger side. It was a second before Figgs realized that the woman holding on to the door frame was not Junior’s grandmother. Junior’s mother’s hair was bunched on one side of her head as though she’d slept wrong on it. Her eyes were red, and long streaks of mascara glistened on her cheeks. No tears now, she looked all cried out. That impulse, that little spark that used to drive him in the old days flared up briefly.
Maybe
, Figgs thought,
I can get a little something out of her
. “Can I come in for a minute?” he asked.

She left the door open and wandered into the living room. Figgs followed her, closing the door behind him. “What do you want, detective? I have a busy day. I have to make arrangements to bury my baby.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.” The words sounded lame before the woman’s devastation. “I want to catch the person who shot Junior.”

She reared back, as though regarding him, and laughed. “You know you’re never going to catch them. No one will come forward to tell you what they saw.”

“There is one person who can help. He looks a lot like Junior. He can tell me who might want to kill someone who looks like Junior.”

“Stutter isn’t home.” Her face was closing him off. “I don’t know where he is.”

“Your son has warrants. There are a lot of people gunning for him. You have my number. Let him know I’m not looking to arrest him. He can meet with me anywhere he chooses, and I guarantee he walks out without the cuffs. You don’t want to lose another son.”

Figgs stood up and walked to the front hall. He could hear Mrs. Simpson crying as he closed the door.

T
ell us again what you saw,” Alves said. He was at the ball field
, Chestnut Hill Park, near Boston College. The stadium was about a quarter mile away. He was getting impatient with the witness, one of many tailgaters he and Wayne Mooney had to interview. Alves hated dealing with drunks. That was one thing he didn’t miss. When he was a patrolman, a regular part of his job was dealing with drunk drivers, drunks getting into fights, drunks stumbling around their houses and injuring themselves. Most of the time they babbled, and sometimes, if you were really lucky, they’d throw up in the back of the cruiser. You could never get rid of that smell.

This one looked like he was getting ready to blow the tailgate snacks he’d been shoving down his gullet all morning. Fans milled around them, and from Alumni Stadium Alves could hear a din and the faint marching music of bands warming up.

“Take your time,” Mooney said. “Try to focus. Tell us exactly what you remember.”

“It was nothing. I was coming back to our spot from the stadium,” the drunk waved to someone in a car passing by. “Have you ever been to the stadium? It’s a nice place but they shut down the concessions too soon. Everything’s so expensive. Anyway, I felt like I hadn’t eaten since half-time.
You ever get that feeling like you’re so hungry you could throw up if you don’t get something to eat?”

“What happened when you got back to the tailgate?” Alves asked.

“Like I said before, this is my favorite spot. At the top of the bleachers. You get all this extra seating, and sometimes you get entertained by a baseball game. Anyway, I’m starving so I just want to spark up the grill and get some sausages going. I love sausages. We had those Chinese ones with, like, the Ah-So sauce built right into them. Those are awesome. We had the hot Italian ones, too. I couldn’t figure out which kind I wanted so I decided to grill a bunch.”

Alves wanted to strangle the guy. “After you got the sausages going, you said you saw something.”

“Oh, yeah. I’m sorry, officer. I saw a white van.”

“What kind of van?”

“Ford. Chevy. It was American.”

“Anything unusual about it? Old model, new, dents, bumper stickers, modifications?”

“An older model, in good condition. Not beat-up or rusty. Roof rack. One of those homemade jobs, built with welded pipe and a white PVC pipe attached with caps on the ends.”

“Any company name on the van?”

“Just a white van. The kind you see the Irish plasterers and painters riding around Brighton in.”

“How about a plate number?”

“No.”

“If it was a nondescript white van, why do you remember it?”

“Because it was bouncing around.”

“Did you hear any noise coming from the van?”

“No.”

“Gunshots?”

“Jesus, no.” His eyes widened at the suggestion.

“How close did you get?”

“Pretty close.”

“How close?” Mooney asked.

“I got right up next to it. I’m no Peeping Tom. I just wanted to find out what was going on in there. See if I could hear some moans or something. That guy must have had the thing soundproofed, because it was hopping all over the place, but I couldn’t hear anything. I didn’t go any
farther than that. I didn’t try to peek in the windows or anything. You know what they say, ‘if you see this van a rockin’, don’t come a knockin’.’ I’m no Peeping Tom.”

“What happened next?” Alves asked.

“The fat from the sausages made the grill flare up. I had a massive grease fire on my hands. The grill was too close to my truck, so I had to get over there and get everything under control. By the time I got it squared away, the van was gone. Too bad, because I wanted to see what they looked like, maybe give them a standing-O.”

“Yeah,” Alves said, “too bad. We’ll be in touch.” He and Mooney turned toward the next group of tailgaters.

“You get all his info?” Mooney asked.

Alves nodded. “I don’t know what good it’ll do us.”

“We can pay him a visit at his house some time. He might remember more when he’s sober.”

“Maybe a good candidate for hypnosis,” Alves said.

“We can take him to have his palm read while we’re at it.”

“I’m serious, Sarge.”

“It’s a waste of time, Angel. If he does remember something, we won’t be able to use him at trial. Any good defense attorney will tear him apart. He’ll say that the testimony was fabricated by false memories suggested by the hypnotist at the request of the police.”

“Right now he isn’t a witness to anything,” Alves said. “He saw a white van rocking. For all we know it could have been two guys having a Greco-Roman wrestling match. If hypnosis helps him remember a plate number, maybe we’ll have something. A tainted witness is better than no witness.”

C
onnie rang the doorbell and waited to be buzzed in. Once inside
, he jogged up the stairs, two at a time, to the second floor. The door at the end of the hall was open a crack, a big striped cat paw hooked around it, trying to pull it open. Connie nudged the escaping cat back into the apartment and closed the door.

Mooney and Alves were sitting in the living room set up like a command center. A card table was stationed in the middle of the room. The walls were lined with giant colored Post-it notes.

Connie set a Box-of-Joe and half a dozen bagels from Dunkies on a ratty coffee table. “Sunday brunch is served,” he said. “I appreciate you letting me in on this, Sarge.”

“What’s so important that it couldn’t wait till tomorrow?” Alves asked, irritation in his voice. “I thought you were getting ready for a trial.”

“Garden variety gun case,” Connie said, easing into a folding chair. It wasn’t worth getting into with Angel. Something was wrong with the detective, and Connie didn’t feel like playing junior psychiatrist. “I have some ideas on the Prom Night case. Angel said you’re trying to find a link between the fortunes and the victims.”

“You got something that will help us?” Mooney asked.

“What were the fortunes again?”

“They’re all up here on the wall,” Mooney pointed. “Color-coded for each set of murders. First one, Adams and Flowers, fortune was ‘
STOP SEARCHING FOREVER, HAPPINESS IS RIGHT NEXT TO YOU
.’ With Markis and Riley he left us, ‘
LIFE IS AN ADVENTURE, FEAR AND WORRY ONLY SPOIL IT
.’ Then Picarelli and Weston, ‘
EVERY EXIT IS AN ENTRANCE TO NEW HORIZONS
.’”

“Now, with Steadman and Kipping,” Alves said, “‘
DEPART NOT FROM THE PATH WHICH FATE HAS YOU ASSIGNED
.’ Odd thing is the fortune looks like the ones from ten years ago.”

“All came from a company called Kookie King,” Mooney said. “Company’s still around. One of the largest suppliers in the area. Haven’t changed the format over the years. The fortunes left with the original victims were printed in black ink, all capital letters. They gave a fortune and nothing else. More recently, a lot of the other companies switched to colored ink, blues and reds. They have a fortune, a lucky number and a translation of a phrase in Chinese. And they don’t use all caps. The fortunes aren’t as good as the ones Kookie King uses.”

“So our guy is old school, a purist, like you,” Connie said. “He sticks with these cookies because they give him his true fortunes.”

“Interesting.” Mooney said. “Whenever Leslie and I ordered Chinese, before we broke into our fortune cookies she would ask if I thought this would be her one true fortune.”

“And?” Alves asked.

“Let’s say he has these twisted thoughts bouncing around and he’s trying to give some legitimacy to the urges he’s feeling,” Mooney said. “Maybe he’s having homicidal thoughts about the girl he rides the bus with every morning. Then he gets this fortune telling him that happiness is right next to him. Basically telling him his feelings are right.”

“His one true fortune,” Connie said.

“I went through every inch of Kelly Adams’s life,” Mooney said. “She was the first female victim. I didn’t find anything.”

“What if it was the boy next door that he was interested in?” Connie asked. “Did you look into Eric Flowers’s life?”

“I didn’t find anything.” Mooney stood up and moved toward the window, looking out onto Gallivan Boulevard. Maybe he wasn’t looking at anything outside, just focused on his own reflection.

“Second victims, Daria Markis and David Riley, used to go parking up on Chickatawbut Road, a known cruising spot,” Alves said.