Next of Kin (38 page)

It was perfectly planned. McDougal’s final man came through the door at the sound of the gunfire. The door opened inward, with Coale on the other side even as it swung open and the man
stepped into the room, gun drawn. Coale aimed at the center of the thin, balsawood door and fired seven shots in quick succession.

The door rocked, and Coale heard the familiar grunts and gurgles of a man taking a bullet in the thoracic cavity. There was a loud thud, and the door swung fully open, so that it was flush to
the office wall. The man was lying on the floor, his jacket covered in blood. A dark red line ran from his nose, and he wheezed, gasping for breath.

The man’s hand was still wrapped around his gun, lying flat on the ground. He looked up, and as he saw Coale, the hand twitched. He was trying to raise it but he had no strength.

Coale walked over and stepped on the hand. He could feel the fingers crack beneath his weight, trapped between his heavy shoe, the butt of the gun, and the floor. The man on the floor winced in
agony. It was amazing to Coale that even with multiple slugs having ripped through it, the human body still functioned effectively enough to recognize a new source of pain.

The man looked up at Coale, his eyes pleading.

Coale looked back at him. He shook his head slightly.

He raised his gun, and put a bullet into the man’s forehead.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Long didn’t go home. There was no point. Finn’s words rang in his ears.

He said he was going to finish it
.

Whatever was going to happen was going to happen soon.

He went to the station house, to the detectives’ bureau, where his desk had been for the better part of a decade. The place was empty. Even downstairs, it was quiet; not a lot of street
action in the city that night. At night, the station house took on an otherworldly feel. An empty, abandoned feeling. It fit his mood.

He stood at the window, looking down on the street from the second floor. The rain continued to fall, and the streetlights sparked diamonds on the asphalt. The steady slosh of tires over the wet
streets made him think of the ocean down at Nantasket Beach, where his family went for a week every summer when he was a child. They stayed at a run-down motel across the street from the beach, a
quarter mile down from the arcades and the honky-tonks. It had been heaven to him. It was beautiful and clean – a respite from the violence of the rest of their lives. The sound of the waves
so close set an even, steady rhythm that calmed everyone.

Tires through puddles seemed a poor substitute.

A hand touched his shoulder. ‘You okay?’

He turned to look at Racine. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘You?’

She shrugged. ‘I figured you’d be here.’

‘I’ve got no place else to go.’ As he said the words, he felt their full meaning.

‘I know.’

‘Kevin McDougal’s dead.’

‘I heard.’ She took her hand off his back, leaned against a desk. ‘It’s going to get worse, isn’t it?’

He nodded. ‘It is.’ He walked over and leaned against the same desk, next to her. They were shoulder to shoulder, both looking out the window. Lights from a squad car flashed off the
raindrops sliding down the glass.

‘Is there anything I can do?’

He thought about it for a moment. Then he shook his head. ‘I’m not sure there’s anything anyone can do.’

Coale made it back to his loft without attracting attention. Soon there would be a full search for him underway. The lawyer and the girl would give a complete description of
him, and by morning every cop on the street would have a composite sketch so detailed it would look like a photograph. He took a significant risk letting them go. He hadn’t had a choice,
though, had he?

He stripped off his shirt. The left sleeve was soaked in blood, and there was a dark red hole on the outer edge of his shoulder. The bleeding had slowed, but it still oozed steadily. He’d
been lucky. If the bullet had hit the bone, his mobility would have been severely impaired. That would have made his last task much more difficult. As it was, he would be stiff and sore, but not in
a way that he would take notice of.

He pulled out a bowl and a medical kit, filled the bowl with rubbing alcohol. The medical kit had a needle and surgical thread. He put both into the alcohol, dipped a towel in and cleaned the
wound. The alcohol on the bullet hole burned, but it was a good burn. A surface burn. Not the nauseous pain that came with more serious damage.

Once the wound was cleaned, he pulled out the needle and stitched the edges together. He had to wipe the blood out of the way several times, but by the time he was done he could already see the
wound clotting. He put a bandage on it and put a clean undershirt on.

Resting on the edge of the bed, he breathed in deeply, filling his lungs. He tried to remember the last time he’d had a good sleep. Too long ago to recall. That would not be rectified
tonight. He had to pack. By noon he planned to be long gone from Boston. Air travel was out of the question; too many law enforcement types at the airports. He’d drive out of the city. West.
Keep going until he couldn’t stay on the road anymore, then find a place by the side of the highway. A cheap place. The kind of a place where no one asked any questions. The kind of a place
where they assumed everyone was on the run from something. A husband. A wife. A life. He’d figure out where to go once he’d had a chance to rest. As much as it would hurt, he’d
ditch the car, get something else to drive; something Midwestern, inconspicuous. But first, he had one more job to do.

He packed quickly. He was a minimalist, and took only what he needed. As he loaded his suitcase he glanced at the pocket where he kept the pictures. He was tempted to pull them out again. Until
recently, he’d gone so long without looking at them that the pain had almost vanished. Not vanished, actually, but the scar tissue had grown so thick over the wound that it was almost like
the pain wasn’t there anymore. It wasn’t true, of course. The pain had always been there. Waiting to grab at him at the first opportunity. Waiting for the scar tissue to tear open and
reveal the true depth of the wound.

He left the pictures where they were. He would have time to look at them. He would have time to grapple with his past once he was gone. Right now he had to focus.

Early morning was the time to strike – a few hours before sunrise. That was when the attention of the security guards would be at its lowest ebb. That was when he would have the best
chance of getting inside the house undetected. Once inside, he would find a way to get the man alone. He needed time. He needed to make himself understood. That required privacy.

After the suitcase was packed and he was fully dressed, he cleaned the loft – cleaned it like he’d cleaned a thousand places in his long career. People would be coming after him. The
police. The feds. McDougal’s people. Others. No need to give them any help.

Once he was done, he looked around the place. He tried to remember how long he’d lived there. He had no idea, really. Ten years, maybe fifteen. A lifetime to some. To him, the blink of an
eye.

He turned off the light and locked the door. He wasn’t coming back. Ever.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

‘You should try to sleep,’ Finn said.

Sally looked up at him. She was sitting on the couch in the living room, her knees drawn up to her chin. ‘You’re joking, right?’

‘You should try, at least.’

Lissa and Kozlowski were sitting on stools at the kitchen counter. They’d come as soon as Finn called them to tell them what had happened. ‘Let her be,’ Lissa said to Finn.

He was standing against the wall, and he stared at Lissa, for a moment ready to argue with her. He didn’t have the energy, though. He nodded and felt his shoulders sag.

‘At least you know now,’ Lissa offered. ‘That’s something.’

‘I don’t know anything,’ Finn said.

‘You know who killed your mother. Wasn’t that what this was all about?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know who killed her.’

‘The man in the alley. You said he told you.’

‘He was working for someone. Buchanan. Maybe Eamonn. Maybe both. He might have been the one who actually hit her, but someone else was pulling his strings. I need to know who.’

‘You’re crazy,’ Lissa said. ‘You need to let this go.’

‘Let it go?’ Finn said. ‘Kevin McDougal tried to kill me. He tried to kill Sally. We watched as some stranger put a bullet in his head. You think it doesn’t matter
why?’

‘That’s right,’ Lissa said. ‘I don’t think it matters why. Right now the only thing that matters to me is that you and Sally weren’t killed. The only thing
that matters to me is that you’re both here right now. I don’t know why the guy in the alley let you two go, but next time you may not be so lucky.’ She was raising her voice; the
baby stirred in his car seat propped on the kitchen counter. She reached in and put her hand on top of him, lowered her voice to a hiss. ‘You need to focus on what’s
important.’

‘This is important,’ Sally said.

The three adults looked at her, surprised.

‘It’s important,’ she said, ‘because I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life. The one thing I know from where I grew up is that shit
like this doesn’t just go away. Someone tries to kill you once, they’ll try again. It’s easier to deal with that if you can see it coming. If Finn let’s this go now,
it’ll come back around. Maybe not this week, but sometime down the road.’

The room was silent for a while. The rain was beating against the windows. The baby gurgled softly.

‘What do you think?’ Finn asked Kozlowski.

He tilted his head. ‘If you’re really gonna follow this through, don’t bother starting with Eamonn,’ he said. ‘His son was just murdered – I would stay away
from him. He’s not going to be warm and fuzzy, and you’re not gonna get any information out of him.’

‘That’s a good bet.’

‘That just leaves Buchanan.’

‘He’s desperate for me to drop this,’ Finn said. ‘He showed up here with a couple of his security people; it seemed pretty important to him to be done with this, and he
made it clear that he wasn’t going to give me any information. He’s never gonna admit that he’s my father even if he really is.’

‘You don’t need him to admit that he’s your father. The police are running DNA tests, and they’re gonna be able to tell whether he’s your father. You need for him
to tell you what happened to your mother. You need to know whether he had anything to do with that.’

‘And you think he’ll just come out and tell me that?’ Finn said.

‘Maybe. If he was convinced that you wouldn’t go to the cops.’ Kozlowski looked hard at Finn. ‘Let me ask you this: What would you do if you found out he was your father,
and that he did have your mother killed? Would you turn him in?’

The question caught Finn short. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t thought that far ahead.’

‘It’s not that far ahead anymore,’ Kozlowski said. ‘It’s pretty much right here.’

Finn considered the question. ‘I don’t know the man,’ he said. ‘Why would I have any loyalty to him?’

‘You didn’t know your mother at all, either,’ Kozlowski said. ‘You seem to have some sort of loyalty to her, though.’

‘He left me. He abandoned me.’

‘So did your mother.’

‘It’s different.’

‘Why?’

Finn sighed. ‘I don’t know. Maybe it’s not.’

‘If he really is your father, could you send him to jail? For good or bad, he’s your blood. He’s the only father you’ll ever have.’

Finn closed his eyes. ‘I don’t know. I would have to look into his eyes when he tells me. I wouldn’t know until that moment.’

Kozlowski looked at his watch. ‘Well, you should get yourself ready,’ he said. ‘Because that moment is coming up in a few hours. First thing this morning, we’re going
over there.’

Coale left his car near the top of Beacon Hill, a block from Buchanan’s mansion on Louisburg Square. It might get a ticket, but it wouldn’t get towed, and it would
take a day for the police to connect any information on the ticket with events at the mansion. He planned to ditch the car by then.

Walking down Pinkney Street toward the Square from above gave him an excellent view of the Buchanan residence. It was four-fifteen in the morning. The rain had stopped and the streets were
slick, reflecting the glow from the streetlights and the moon above. The neighborhood was silent and still, the fall leaves were stuck to the sidewalks from the rain.

He ducked into a small alley that ran off Pinkney behind the house. He knew that Buchanan had security, but to the extent that there were guards on duty at night, they would likely be stationed
at the front door. Perhaps they might walk a circuit around the house once an hour, but it would almost certainly be on the hour. Security relied, paradoxically, on set schedules and patterns that
allowed those who recognized them to defeat them fairly easily. Most security ‘experts’ suffered from a tragic inflexibility that provided exploitable gaps.

A wooden fence bordered the property along the alley – six feet tall, with two gates. Peering over the fence, he could see that one of the gates led to the patio off the front of the
kitchen. The second led to the back of the kitchen, where a line of trash bins were stacked against the brick wall of a narrow outer passageway.

He jumped the fence out by the garbage. The passageway was blocked off to both the street and the rest of the house. It could be seen only from a small area of the kitchen; at this time of the
day, that didn’t pose a problem. He had time to work, though he didn’t intend to take that for granted. The faster he got into the house, the better off he would be.

The door to the kitchen was an antique. Architects liked to retain as many of the original fixtures as possible on historic homes like this one when they renovated. It retained a touch of
authenticity that was essential to the integrity of the place. On the other hand, it compromised areas, such as energy efficiency and safety.

Coale took out a leather case, slipped out his lock pick. He had the lock turned within thirty seconds. Before turning the handle, he brought out a small device with an LCD readout and two wires
running to open clips. It was a useful tool that was capable of overriding alarm codes on most current systems. All he had to do was crack the alarm panel and affix the clips to the correct wires
within a minute of entry.