Next of Kin (21 page)

‘That doesn’t answer the question.’

‘It’s as much of an answer as I think I’ll ever have.’

‘So that’s it?’ she asked. ‘You’re beyond redemption?’

He gave a sad smile. ‘That’s the last thing my father said to me. He told me there was no salvation for what I’d done. When you’re a cop, your partner is your brother. My
father told me I killed my brother, and there’s no coming back from that. He couldn’t forgive me. He called it the world’s greatest sin. That was two days before he
died.’

Her heart was breaking for him. She stepped forward and took hold of his sweat shirt. He let himself be pulled, and she wrapped her arms around his back. She felt him lower his head onto her
shoulder.

They stood there quietly for several minutes. Finally she stepped back and looked at him. He seemed so tired. ‘Come on,’ she said, motioning toward her apartment door. ‘You can
come in.’

‘Are you sure?’ he asked.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure.’

He nodded.

She turned and walked back into her apartment. It took a moment, but eventually he followed her.

The phone rang at Finn’s apartment that night. When he answered it, he was surprised to hear the voice of Shelly Tesco, the director of adoption services at the Health
Services Center in New Hampshire. ‘Mr Finn, I have your records,’ she said.

‘Will you give them to me?’

‘That would be illegal,’ she replied.

‘Then why did you call?’

‘You misunderstand, Mr Finn. It would be illegal for me to actually give them to you. And if I give the actual records to you, people will know I was the one who handed them over.
I’m not going to risk that. I will let you look at them, though. Only up here, and just you.’

Finn’s heart beat a little faster. ‘Okay,’ he agreed. ‘I can’t make it tomorrow, but how about Tuesday night?’

‘That’s fine.’

‘Should I meet you at your office?’

‘No,’ Tesco said. ‘I don’t want anyone seeing you here again. I’ll pick a place and I’ll call to let you know where.’

‘Okay.’

‘I should warn you, Mr Finn, there are some irregularities in your file.’

‘What sort of irregularities?’ Finn asked.

‘I don’t want to discus it over the phone. You should just know that it may not have all the answers you’re looking for. There may just be more questions. I’m still doing
some checking, but it’s one of the more unusual cases I’ve come across.’

‘You can’t tell me about it now?’

‘No,’ Tesco said. ‘Tuesday.’

‘Tuesday, then,’ Finn said.

When Coale slept, which wasn’t often, it was in a small loft in a converted warehouse in the leather district, sandwiched between Chinatown and the business district, on
the edge of what had once been known as the combat zone. He could have afforded a much larger place; in fact, he could have afforded several larger places, but he had no interest in ostentation.
His needs were minimal, and his desires virtually non-existent. His was a wholly purpose-driven life, the purpose changing with the whims of his clients and the demands of his current
employment.

He was in the loft on Sunday night to shower and sleep for a few hours. He would need the sleep now; he had work to do the next day. He’d been listening to the conversation between Finn
and Shelly Tesco through the bug he’d placed in Finn’s phone while the lawyer was meeting with McDougal two days earlier. There was no question about what had to be done. First he had
to drive out to western Massachusetts, then up to New Hampshire. It would be a long day, and he wasn’t looking forward to it, but it was part of the job.

He’d spent the weekend tailing the lawyer, watching him as he spent time with the detective and his wife and kid. He’d watched the way Finn interacted with the Malley girl. A quick
search of state records on the Internet had revealed her history. It was a miracle she wasn’t curled up in an alley somewhere with a needle sticking out of her arm.

Watching them for a few days, it had struck him how foreign their lives were to any reality he’d ever known. He wondered what it would have been like for him if he’d been allowed
such a life. Not that it mattered; that had ended for him long ago.

He sat on the edge of his bed, the only piece of furniture in the loft, and let the water from the shower drip off his hair into the towel wrapped around his waist. A few hours’ sleep
would be good.

He looked over at the large suitcase in the corner that held most of his worldly possessions, wrestling with his impulses. It was pointless, he knew; the past was gone, and it wasn’t
coming back. And yet he couldn’t fight the compulsion to pick at the ancient scabs, to peel them back and let the wounds bleed again, if only so that he could feel something –
anything.

The pictures were tucked away in an interior pocket of the suitcase, wrapped in plastic to protect them. They were all that was left of his past. Even the memories had faded to the point where
they were only fleeting impressions.

He pulled the photographs out. His breathing quickened. There were only two, but they’d been cared for well, and the images had only yellowed slightly. The first was a picture of his
father, standing in front of one of the cars – the black Rolls with the maroon trim. It had been his favorite. He’d worked tirelessly to keep it in immaculate shape. Even after
he’d been fired, he went over it one last time: cleaning the exterior with soft soap and drying it with a chamois; rubbing on two layers of wax and buffing it to a brilliant shine; wiping
down the tires and treating the interior leather. When he’d finished, he’d hung the keys on a nail at the entrance of the garage, walked up to the garage apartment he and his son had
shared for seven years, thrown a rope over a rafter and hanged himself.

Coale had found him an hour later, and he’d screamed as he tried to lift the weight of the body off the rope, crying desperately as he tried to cut his father down without letting the body
sag back onto the noose. Finally the gardener heard the screams and came running. He’d cut the rope with his shears, and the boy had collapsed from exhaustion and grief.

Coale looked at the picture for a long time, rubbing his thumb over the image as he allowed himself to remember.

After a while he flipped the picture and looked at the second. This one held the image of a young girl, smiling at the camera. The sun was in her eyes, and she squinted slightly, but there was
no mistaking her intimate joy. He only glanced at this picture for a few seconds. Some memories were too painful to dwell upon.

He wrapped the pictures back up in the plastic and put them away in the suitcase. Then he lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. He only had a few hours to sleep. Then he had to get back to
work.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Assistant District Attorney Peter Mitchell was a man of the people. He’d grown up in Dorchester, the son of a pipe fitter with Jamaican roots and a nurse whose parents
had emigrated from Ecuador. At the local public school where more than two thirds of the students were failing, he was exceptional. In his valedictory speech on graduation day he’d attributed
his success to his parents’ determination. After attending UMass Boston on a full scholarship and again graduating at the top of his class, he was accepted at Harvard Law School. The
competition there was more rigorous, but he still managed to graduate in the top quarter of his class, and to be named an editor of the
Law Review
. When it came time for him to pick from any
number of jobs that were waiting for a new lawyer of his academic achievement and cultural background, he chose to join the District Attorney’s Office.

To some it seemed like a bizarre choice. In private practice he could have made five times his thirty-thousand-dollar salary as an ADA. He knew, though, that he would never survive in the
rarified air of one of the city’s old-line, white-shoe firms. It wasn’t that he lacked the intelligence. He had as much book smarts as anyone coming out of the Ivy League, and
he’d put his common sense well above that of any of his silver-spoon contemporaries. Most of them had never experienced real life.

But he would never have survived because he was, at his core, an angry young man. He’d spent his entire life doing what people expected of him. He’d studied and smiled and worked his
ass off to live up to the standards that others set for him. The very idea that he would spend the next seven years buttering the buns of a bunch of middle-aged white assholes who would inevitably
assume him to be a product of affirmative action was enough to make him consider a trip to one of the local gun shows out in western Massachusetts to make a purchase. He knew he would have lasted
all of a month before he punched someone in the face.

And so, rather than put himself in a position to fail, he put himself in a position where he could exploit all of his natural gifts. The DA’s office was perfect for him. He was smart and
motivated and political. It didn’t hurt that he was black, and he could talk to jurors in a way that made sense. He was marked for greatness the moment he stepped into the office, and three
years later it was only a matter of what he wanted to do now.

He’d been given the Kevin McDougal file as a reward for all the hard work he’d put in. Kevin was a bit player of little importance in the grand scheme of things. His father, though,
was a star in Boston’s shadowy mob world. Putting his son in jail for a significant time would be a coup.

Both Peter Mitchell and Scott Finn knew all this as they sat across the table from each other at the Capital Grille on Newbury Street out near Massachusetts Avenue. The restaurant had been
chosen carefully. It was far enough out that it was reasonably close to the courthouse in Roxbury. It was nice, but not too nice, with thick steaks and dark wood that bespoke a male-dominated world
where deals were expected.

They had engaged in the obligatory small talk throughout the lunch as they dug into their porterhouses, trading tidbits about judges and politicians and other lawyers, establishing their bona
fides and setting the boundaries of male camaraderie, if not quite trust. It wasn’t until the plates were cleared away that the real conversation began.

‘I’m representing Kevin McDougal,’ Finn said as the coffee was served.

Mitchell nodded as he stirred his cup. ‘I saw that on the docket. Lissa Krantz talked to my assistant.’

‘Any idea what you’re thinking on plea bargain?’

Mitchell smiled. ‘I wasn’t thinking about any plea bargain,’ he said. ‘I was thinking about taking it to trial.’

‘You serious?’ Finn said, shaking his head. ‘Your witness is for shit. She’s, what, six months out of the academy? It was entrapment.’

Mitchell laughed. ‘Your boy walked up to her next to a school playground and offered her a couple rocks. You think the jury’s gonna buy into an entrapment defense?’

‘After I get done with her?’ Finn let out a slow whistle. ‘She’ll be lucky if the jury doesn’t convict her. She’s never been on the stand before, has
she?’

Mitchell shook his head. ‘Nope. Doesn’t matter; she looks like she’s fourteen. The jury’ll take one look at her, and they’ll be so pissed off at your client, they
won’t even listen to your cross. Either that or they’ll get pissed at you for attacking her.’

‘You’ve never seen me work, have you?’ Finn said.

‘I have. It’s impressive, but it won’t be enough. Not in this case.’

‘You sound so sure, but I can see a little doubt in your eyes. You’ve got a great career ahead of you; you can practically write your own ticket if you don’t screw things up.
The only sort of thing that could derail you is an acquittal in a case like this.’ Finn sipped his coffee as he let that sink in. ‘I don’t tend to lose.’

Mitchell stirred his coffee quietly. ‘What did you have in mind?’ he asked after a moment.

‘I can probably get my guy to cop to a possession charge, B-class misdemeanor, eighteen months probation.’ Finn said the words as though he were offering the ADA a gift.

Mitchell dropped his spoon, and it made a loud ringing sound off the china. ‘Thanks for the lunch, Finn,’ he said, ‘but if you were just bringing me out to fuck with me, we
could have gone someplace closer to the courthouse.’ He started to stand.

‘Wait, wait,’ Finn pleaded. ‘Sit down.’

‘Why? So you can insult my intelligence some more? Your boy’s facing fifteen-to-thirty hard time with a two and a half year minimum on a case a first year law student could win, and
you think you can get it bumped by buying me a nice lunch? Don’t call me again.’

‘Please,’ Finn said. He motioned to the chair.

Mitchell shook his head as though he were crazy to even consider sitting down with Finn again, but he pulled out the chair and took a seat anyway. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘You gonna
buy me dessert now?’

‘I need this case to go away,’ Finn said quietly. It was almost a whisper. His tone was desperate, and the words made him wince. It seemed hard to believe they’d even made it
past his lips. ‘I need you to
make
this case go away.’

The young ADA looked at Finn quizzically. ‘You’re putting me on, chief, right?’ He looked around the restaurant. ‘Where’s Ashton Kutcher, because I know I’m
getting punked here.’

Finn shook his head. ‘I’m not joking. I need your help.’

Mitchell frowned. ‘I can’t give you this kind of help, you know that.’ He leaned in close. ‘We’re off the record, okay?’

Finn nodded.

‘I don’t like what you do,’ Mitchell said. ‘You should know that. Defense lawyers get rich by getting their clients off even when they’re guilty. And don’t
give me the “everybody has a right to a defense” bullshit. I’ve heard this rationalization; it doesn’t fly. To me, that’s all a bunch of soul-soothing crap meant to
justify the money your kind makes.’ It might have been a campaign speech were it not for the fact that the words came out with real venom. He checked himself and continued more calmly.
‘But as defense lawyers go, I’ve always thought of you as one of the good guys. One of the guys who wouldn’t break the rules. So I’m sitting here wondering why the hell
you’re asking me to throw a case. Is it for money?’