Mission Liberty (38 page)

“He talk much about his daughter?”

“Not much, actually,” DeLuca said. “What can you tell me?”

He knew that to Morrissey, even though they were friends, Morrissey nevertheless saw him as a fed, and cops didn’t like feds,
for a wide variety of reasons, mainly for how they took credit for everything and treated cops like scum.

“Not much,” Morrissey said. “She got off work at four-fifteen and walked to her car.”

“Working where?”

“You obviously don’t have any trouble sleeping,” Morrissey said. “If you did and you were awake in the middle of the night,
you’d have heard her radio show. Sports Nation. They do it here but it’s syndicated nationally. 6.90 AM, WSPO. It’s her, a
guy named ‘Dan the Man,’ and the producer.”

“She was on air?”

Morrissey nodded.

“Reporting the nightly scores, but she also used to join in all the chitchat for the female perspective. The show goes until
five, but her last segment is taped so she leaves at four-thirty. They talk about whatever’s going on in the sports world
and steroids or whatever and they take calls.”

“Anything unusual about tonight’s show?” he asked as they approached the body.

“We’re getting a transcript, but no, we don’t think so. She was shot about a quarter to five. The shooter was waiting for
her, here.”

“He didn’t follow her across the park?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” Morrissey said.

“So he knew her,” DeLuca said. “And he knew her car. He knew where to wait.”

“Maybe,” Morrissey said. “Probably.”

“Robbery?”

“Her money is missing from her purse but her credit cards are there. She isn’t wearing any jewelry, but we don’t know that
she wore jewelry, so that don’t mean it was taken.”

“Security cameras?”

“Disabled.”

“Disabled?” DeLuca said. “When?”

“Last night.”

“How?”

“I’ll show you,” Morrissey said. He led DeLuca to the cement pillar in the center of the garage’s northern end where the security
camera was mounted. DeLuca saw that someone had used a short length of plastic rod and duct tape to hang a small mirror in
front of the camera lens, one end of the rod wedged into the gap at the top between the lens-body and the camera housing.
The rod was bright red, and a cross-section of it would have revealed the shape of a four-leafed clover.

“What is that?” DeLuca asked.

“They’re called KNEX,” Morrissey said. “It’s like the new Tinker Toys. They sell sets for kids in practically every toy store.
I got some for my grandchildren.”

“You got grandchildren now?” DeLuca asked.

“Two,” Morrissey said. “Twins. Cameron and Maeve. Born right around when you left. Anyway, you can make any shape you want
with ’em and they’re pretty strong. Once the mirror was in place, you’d still see the garage, but from a different angle.
You’d have to be paying wicked-close attention to even notice the view had changed. I got guys in the security office right
now looking at the video. The license plate numbers all start to reverse around three thirty. We oughta be able to get it
exactly. The downtown bar traffic is pretty much over after two-thirty or three—the guy in the booth said nobody comes in
between three and five.”

“Stairwell cameras?”

“We’re looking,” Morrissey said. “It rained last night, so all you had to do was keep your umbrella up and no one would have
seen a thing. We’re trying to figure out what car might have been parked under the camera—whoever rigged it would have had
to stand on something. If we find the car, maybe we get shoe prints on the hood.”

“So it wasn’t random,” DeLuca said. “The shooter knew.”

“Maybe he knew what he was going to do, but not who to,” Morrissey said. “To whom,” Morrissey corrected himself. “How about
Scott—you got grandkids yet?”

“Scottie was serious about a girl a while back, but she didn’t like the lifestyle,” DeLuca said. “Being an Air Force wife
isn’t for everyone.”

“How’s Bonnie?” Morrissey asked.

“Bonnie’s all right,” DeLuca said, not really wanting to get into it. “Cameron and Maeve, huh?”

“He’s a cupcake,” Morrissey said. “She’s a terror. Usually it’s the other way around.”

“Can you show me the body?”

“I can show you what’s left of it,” Morrissey said. “You’re not going to like what you see.”

“I didn’t expect I would,” DeLuca said.

Morrissey led DeLuca around to the passenger side of the car, a 1999 Honda Accord coupe. The body lay face down in the space
between the car and the garage wall. There was a broad spray of blood and brains staining the wall. The body itself had been
covered by a blanket, pending the arrival of the Suffolk county medical examiner, who was expected shortly.

“The shooter fired across the car,” Morrissey said. “Standing right there, maybe six to eight feet away. On the driver’s side.”

“So why is she on the passenger side?” DeLuca asked. “This is her car, right?”

“Maybe she’s trying to hide?” Morrissey said. “Though she was standing straight up when she got shot and not ducking. We think
she turned her head away at the last second. It’s a little hard to tell.”

“Because?”

“There’s not much left of the head,” Morrissey said. “CSI pulled a slug out of the wall. The hole in the concrete was three
inches wide and six inches deep. It looked like somebody hit it with a sledge hammer. They’re gonna run it to make sure, but
the guy who had it said he was guessing it was a .50AE .300 grain jacketed hollowpoint. We thought forty-five but he said
it was more, and he’s pretty good—he’s usually right. You can tell from the spray pattern that it’s something significant.”

“Fifty cal?” DeLuca said. “What’d he use—a Sharps rifle?”

“Smith and Wesson makes a new .50 caliber magnum,” Morrissey said. “Four and a half fucking pounds of gun. On the market for
about a year. Just under a grand. The ads talk about how the thing can stop a grizzly. You just don’t see a lot of grizzly
bears in the Boston Common parking garage.” “Desert Eagle” by Magnum Research automatic, camo $2000 .50AE .300 grain jacketed
hollowpoint shell big hole in garage hole. 3”, bullet in the middle, like hittinmg with sledge hammer crumbled in

“That’s because they’ve all been shot with fifty mags’,” DeLuca said.

“There haven’t been too many sold,” Morrissey said. “We’re looking at recent registrations.”

“I won’t hold my breath,” DeLuca said. Perhaps someone who’d bought and registered an S&W .50 had reported one stolen—a weapon
that large and that expensive would be something thieves would want to steal, but it was still a remote possibility. “Can
I have a look?”

“Brace yourself,” Morrissey said. “This is like getting hit point blank by an elephant gun.”

He pulled back the blanket. DeLuca saw a torso, and a neck, and the lower part of the skull, and a fray of connective tissues.
The rest of the head had been dispersed against the wall and floor, where a large pool of blood had collected. The beam of
Morrissey’s flashlight revealed a number of white teeth and bone fragments scattered in the corner of the garage, amidst the
blood and gray matter.

“Jesus Christ,” DeLuca said. He’d seen worse, in Iraq, the results of sixty-caliber machine guns and mortar rounds and RPGs
and IEDs, but that was war, and that wasn’t the daughter of someone he knew. She was wearing a white skirt, stained where
her bowels had released postmortem, and a pale blue top under a navy sweatshirt, still damp where the rain had reached beneath
her umbrella, which was collapsed but not snapped shut in her left hand. Her car keys were still in her right hand. “Do you
mind?” he asked Morrissey, who shrugged.

“It’s all been processed,” Morrissey said.

DeLuca bent down and took the car keys from her hand. He pressed the unlock button on the remote door opener attached to her
key chain. The car did nothing in response. He tried again to be sure.

“Dead battery?” Morrissey asked.

“Presumably,” DeLuca said. “The car is six years old. That’s about how long the remote batteries last. What do you make?”

“You tell me,” Morrissey said.

“She knew the shooter,” DeLuca said. “She was going to let herself in the passenger side. He was going to drive. Just before
she gets into the car, she looks up, sees the gun, turns her head away, blam. Why doesn’t she open the driver’s side first
for him?”

“She doesn’t like him?” Morrissey guessed. “Wexler makes it a mob hit.”

“Why?”

“You should ask him,” Morrissey said. “He’s going to be the case officer on this.”

“Terrific,” DeLuca said.

“Sorry,” Morrissey said. “That was decided before you ever got here.”

Frank Wexler was talking to a uniformed officer and looked up as DeLuca approached. DeLuca knew Wexler had seen him arrive,
but all the same, Wexler feigned surprise.

“Look what the fucking cat dragged in,” Wexler said, turning to the uniformed officer next to him. “Here’s something you can
tell your grandchildren. This is former Lieutenant David DeLuca, formerly of division A. You kill any A-rabs in Iraq, DeLuca,
or you just there to hang out?”

“Morrissey said you make this a hit,” DeLuca said, ignoring Wexler as much as was humanly possible while still talking to
him. “You wanna tell me why?”

“No, I don’t want to tell you why,” Wexler said. “What would compel me to tell you why?”

Wexler had been annoying before, and nothing had changed in the interim. Being patronized by an idiot was like getting kicked
in the shin by a chipmunk, but after a few years, even that got old.

“I don’t know—courtesy?” DeLuca said. “I’m here for the Army, Frank. The victim is the daughter of a general. You wanna wait
until the Halliday tells you you have to help me, or you wanna get a head start on that?”

Wexler looked at Morrissey, who nodded toward him.

“Single shot, right in the melon, inside twenty feet,” Wexler said. “You know the profile.”

“It’s fifty cal,” DeLuca countered. “Hitters use twenty-twos. Twenty-fives, tops.”

“Maybe in your day,” Wexler said. “These days, even preschoolers got nines.”

A fifty-caliber would have made a roar like one of the cannons on Bunker Hill, a sound that would have been magnified, inside
a huge underground parking garage. Hitters worked in public, because sometimes they had to, but they still liked to keep the
attention they drew to a minimum. Maybe the new fifties came with silencer options. He’d have to check.

“You said it was a pro, not a gangbanger,” DeLuca said. “What’s the motivation?”

“Sports book,” Wexler said. “Last year, Katie Quinn called fifteen out of sixteen Patriots games and the spread too. I’m thinking
she was costing the wrong guys a lot of money. Even in Vegas, once her show went national. Steve Wynn even tried to hire her
to handicap for him. That’s as much as I’m going to say, but do you really think I’d waste my time if I didn’t have good solid
reasons?”

“I don’t know, Frank,” DeLuca said. “You might. Four top level retired military brass and a general’s daughter get hit all
on the same day. You don’t find that odd?”

“Rule number one,” Wexler lectured, “things happen at the same time don’t mean they’re related. Maybe I have reasons to believe
my own theories. Why is it that you doubt me so, DeLuca?”

“Call me old-fashioned,” DeLuca said. “I’m the kid of cop who likes to wait for all the information to come in before I form
any theories. Call me kooky.”

“You’re not a cop,” Wexler said. “You’re a fucking Fed. If they make me talk to you face to face, I suppose I’ll have to,
but until I hear from the commissioner’s office, I think I’ll keep my thoughts to myself.”

“Next time they make us talk face to face,” DeLuca said, “I’ll try to remember to bring a chair for you to stand on.”

He was returning to speak with Morrissey when a black sedan pulled up. DeLuca recognized the medical examiner, a man named
Mitch Pasternak, who’d taken the position after DeLuca’s old friend Gillian O’DoHerty vacated the position. Pasternak was
smart and capable. DeLuca hadn’t spent enough time with him to know if he liked him personally or not. He’d farmed work out
to Pasternak when he needed to bypass the endless paperwork and bureaucratic delays that were inevitably a part of working
with the Army forensics labs at Ft. Gillem in Georgia and Ft. Shafter in Hawaii. Pasternak appeared to be puzzled by DeLuca’s
presence. DeLuca explained, briefly, what he was doing there.

“She’s General Joe’s daughter?” Pasternak said. “That sucks. I followed his political campaign pretty closely—I don’t remember
seeing her on the podium with him.”

“I don’t remember either,” DeLuca said. “I know I don’t have to say this, but if you could be particularly thorough with this
one, I’d appreciate it.”

“You got it,” Pasternak said, turning to Morrissey. “They told me some assembly was required—you wanna show me?”

“Over there,” Captain Morrissey said, gesturing over his shoulder with his thumb. “Watch your step.”

DeLuca turned to Morrissey.

“I don’t think my old password is going to work any more,” DeLuca said. “Do you have any problem with providing access to
the department reports?”

“I don’t, personally,” Morrissey said, “but that sounds like something I’d need to check on before I could give you a good
answer.”

“I understand,” DeLuca said. “You mind if I have a look at her purse?”

“Not at all,” Morrissey said.

He was looking for a picture of her, something he could show around if he needed to speak with neighbors or potential witnesses.
The only photograph he could find in her purse was the one on her driver’s license. Katie Quinn favored her father in appearance,
more than a little, and that was not necessarily fortunate. DeLuca used the digital camera in his handheld to copy the photograph,
as well as to briefly record the crime scene. When DeLuca showed the driver’s license picture to Marvin the Moon Man on his
way back across the Common to his car, asking Marvin if he’d seen that person in the park in the wee hours of the morning,
Marvin said, “Who’s that guy?” Marvin said he’d spent the night under the Colonial Theater marquee on Boylston to get out
of the rain and hadn’t seen a thing.