Prowlers - 1 (8 page)

Now this.

'Artie's dead," he whispered, saying it aloud again. This time he was saying it to his mother. He gripped the frame in his hands and stared at her face, searching the still eyes of a dead woman's photograph for some due. For faith.

"Why, Mom? First you, and now... Artie never hurt anyone. And Kate, too. It's just not..."

Jack closed his eyes tight, squeezing out a single tear that slipped down his left cheek. He leaned on the bureau and pressed his forehead against the framed picture, skin on cold glass.

Aside from Courtney, Artie had been the one constant in his life since his mother died. Now for him to die so horribly, to be ... He could barely even think the word murdered, but that was the truth of it.

I’ll kill them, he thought to himself. Put me in a room with them, and I'll kill them.

That was just his pain talking, his grief and fury. For he knew how helpless he was. Even if the police got lucky and were able to figure out who had been committing these savage crimes, Jack would never get within fifty feet of them, and even then it would be in court. His best friend had been murdered and mutilated and there wasn't a damn thing he could do.

He had never felt so useless, so lost. But at least he had Courtney; at least he wasn't alone. One of the first things that occurred to him when the first wave of shock began to subside and before the sorrow began to poison him, to weaken him, to numb him, was that now Molly was truly alone. She had friends in school, and she had an aunt in Philadelphia, but her mother was a coldhearted drunk with calluses on her soul. How a woman like her had ever given birth to a being as kind and decent as Molly had forever been a mystery to everyone.

Molly's only solace had been Artie. In contrast to the terrible knowledge about human behavior she had acquired in her life, Artie was a stunning example of innocence.

But Artie was dead.

Jack nodded to himself, wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. Artie was dead, and just as Courtney had to be strong for him, he realized he had to be strong for Molly. He was all she had.

'Ah, hell, Artie," he muttered to himself.

With a heavy, hitching sigh, he put the photo of his mother back on the bureau and went to the window.

Sunday, not even noon, but there were plenty of people out there going on about their business

as usual. Untouched. Untainted by murder.

The lucky ones.

There was a knock, then Courtney's voice. "Jack?"

"Yeah?"

She pushed the door open, stood there in the hall leaning against the doorframe. Courtney wore a green cotton dress with a little brass tag engraved with her name and title: manager. She looked nice, but her wide eyes still held all the pain of the day—her own and a measure of Jack's as well. She was hurting for him.

"There's a policeman downstairs," she said. "A detective. He wants to ask you some questions about last night. Do you want me to tell him to come back later?" she asked tentatively.

"No. Send him up. I can't help, but I don't want him distracted by waiting for me to talk to him either."

Courtney nodded and turned back toward the stairs. She left his door open.

Jack continued to sit on his bed, hands in his lap, staring at nothing. He realized, after a moment, that he still had on the clothes he'd put on for work that morning. He resolved to change his shirt the moment the cop was gone.

At a soft rap on the door, he rose to find a plain-clothes police officer staring at him, badge in hand. The cop wore jeans and a rust-colored canvas jacket, with a bulge under one arm. Dark hair and eyes, and younger

than Jack would have expected, the guy was definitely still on the uphill climb to forty.

"Jack Dwyer?" he asked.

"Yeah. Have a seat."

The cop glanced around, spotted the black wooden captain's chair in the corner, and went to sit. He spent a few seconds scanning the room as he did so, and Jack wondered what it must be like, being a cop, looking at everything not for what was on the surface but for what might be under it.

Hell of a way to live, he thought. Second-guessing everything.

"I'm Detective Jason Castillo, Boston Homicide," the man said, brow knitted with the gravity of his words. "Your sister told me you're aware of what happened to Arthur Carroll and Katherine Nordling last night."

'Artie," Jack muttered. 'And she was Kate."

"Right," Castillo said, and nodded slowly. "I'm sorry to have to speak to you about this now, but we want to work as quickly as possible. I hope you understand."

"I do." Jack uttered a tiny laugh and looked up. "Mr. Castillo ... Detective ... what the hell do I call you?"

The cop loosened up a bit. "How about Jace?"

'All right, then. Jace, I figure you've got a much bigger investigation than just Artie and Kate going on right now. I saw the news this morning. I'll do anything I can to help you. But why don't I cut to the chase for you? I didn't know Kate very well. We'd met in passing a couple of times but last night was our first date. She was a friend of Artie and Molly's."

"Molly Hatcher?" Castillo asked.

"Molly, right," Jack confirmed. "So I don't know about Kate, but I do know about Artie. I know more than anybody—probably even his parents. He smoked a little pot, belonged to some radical liberal groups at Emerson, and thought that guns and teenage pop stars should be banned in America. Either of those opinions could have pissed people off, as could a couple dozen others that Artie wasn't afraid to talk about."

Jack did not understand the emotions filling him, or the weird rippling energy that ran up and down his spine. Then he knew what it was. It was anger. And Detective Jason Castillo was in the way. Jack stood up from the bed, stalked across the room, then turned to face Castillo.

"What I'm getting at here is that Artie didn't have any enemies. Not really. Oh, there was a kid who stole his lunch every day for a week in junior high. Artie told on him. I know for sure that guy's been arrested a couple of times, but somehow I doubt this is his doing anyway. Artie Carroll wasn't in any gangs, he never met anyone he thought was in a gang and as far as I know, he probably thought that gangs were an invention of the news media, 'cause he thought that about a lot of things."

Breath coming in sharp bursts now, Jack took a few more steps toward Castillo. The detective sat watching him, unfazed.

"We went out to the Dixie Kitchen for dinner last night. Kate and I hit it off pretty well. Then I saw her

smoking and that killed my interest in her, y'know? 'Cause this is a new world and how can you be that smart and smoke? So I figured I wouldn't go out with her again. 'Cause she smoked! You like that irony?" Jack heard his voice getting shrill, but couldn't help it.

"They drove me back here and dropped me off, and that's the last time I saw them until I saw

their pictures on the news this morning," he said, his voice rising nearly to a shout. "And what the hell are you doing here wasting your time with me when you should be out there catching the bastards who did this?"

Castillo watched him impassively, save for the tiniest bit of sympathy in his eyes.

Jack felt as though he were melting inside, all at once. His shoulders sagged and he turned his back on the cop, but he did not cry. "I'm sorry," he said, his own voice sounding like that of a total stranger.

"Me too," Castillo replied.

The detective stood up and crossed the room to stand just inside the door. Jack looked at him, surprised.

"Can I reach you here if I have any more questions?"

Jack nodded.

"I'm sorry for your loss," the detective told him.

Then Jack was alone again.

Eternity.

After Jack knocked on the Carrolls' front door it seemed like forever, an eternity of moments, before he heard footsteps inside. His entire body felt numb and

cold and awkward. Conspicuous, as though anyone who saw him ambling up the front walk would think him an intruder.

An intruder upon the grief of Artie's devastated parents.

When Mrs. Carroll opened the front door, Jack flinched. She had a wary cast to her features, likely from too many conversations with reporters that day. But when she saw Jack, she fell apart piece by piece right in front of him. He had hoped that he could bring some tiny comfort to her. His arrival had apparently had the opposite affect.

"Oh, my God," she rasped, little more than a whisper. She held herself there, shaking, in the doorway.

"Mrs. Carroll," Jack ventured gently. "Ellen." His mouth could hardly form the words. There were ghosts in her eyes, tiny hauntings that were not about the death of her son but about the death of all the days she would have spent with him if he had lived, all the smiles she might have seen, the college graduation and the wedding and someday the grandchildren.

"I'm so sorry," he said. He felt as though the wind had been knocked out of him, his chest aching.

Jack began to cry.

He stepped inside the house and tried not to think about the room just up the stairs where all of Artie's things would start to gather dust, waiting for his return. Remembering would only hurt more. The comic books they had read and the girls they had dreamed aloud about. The hamster Artie had gotten when they were

eight, and the mazes they had built for it out of wooden blocks.

Guns N' Roses albums when that was all they knew of rock and roll.

Red Sox games on Channel 38 or on the radio, and sometimes in Fenway Park.

They had spent so much time together after Jack's mother died, and Artie had never pressed him to talk about it. With Artie, he didn't need to talk about it. And during all those times, the Carrolls had watched out for Jack just as they had for Artie. "I'm sorry," he said again.

Mrs. Carroll wrapped her arms around him as though Jack were all that kept her from slipping deep into the pit of her despair. Jack glanced over her shoulder and saw Artie's father standing in the hall that led from the kitchen into the foyer. He was just watching them, his red-rimmed eyes damp but no tears in his eyes. His face was expressionless, as though his mind had abdicated control of his body and gone off to a place where he wouldn't have to hurt so much.

"Look at us," Mrs. Carroll said as she pulled back and wiped her eyes. 'A son without a mother and a mother without a son."

Difficult as it had been for him to visit Artie's parents, seeing Molly was worse. Jack drove his battered Cherokee to her mother's run-down house in Dorchester and took a roundabout route so he would

not have to pass by the spot where Artie and Kate had been murdered.

Slaughtered.

Part of him felt as though he ought to visit the Nordlings as well, but he had only met Kate a few times and would not have known what to say. He had known Artie's family his whole life and hadn't really had to say anything. All the emotions spoke for him.

Jack rapped on Molly's door. He didn't hear her coming and thought at first she might not be home. Then he heard her voice call weakly from within.

"Who is it"

"It's me, Moll. It's Jack."

When she hauled open the door he was stunned at the change in her. She had always been pale, but now she looked ill, her flesh white and puffy, almost as though she had been killed along with Artie and Kate.

"Oh, Jack," she said, all the pain in her heart expressed in those two words. Then she shook her head, and Jack understood: there were no more words, nothing sufficient to describe what she felt.

Molly stepped away from the door and Jack walked in. He dosed the door and glanced around.

"Where's your mom?" he asked tentatively.

She pressed her lips together in a tight white line, a grimace of pain and humiliation. "Out."

Jack swallowed hard. Then he grabbed Molly and gave her a tight squeeze. Mrs. Hatcher was a drunk and probably a lot of worse things than that. He wondered what kind of person could have learned that her daugh-

ter had lost two of the people closest to her in the world and then gone about her business as if it nothing had changed. But he didn't speak those thoughts aloud. Molly had enough pain.

"Thank you," she whispered.

Jack said nothing. He had no idea how to respond to that.

"Thanks for coming here. For being here. For... for being strong."

Jack laughed at that. When he spoke he was not surprised to hear the hitch in his voice. "Strong?

God, Molly, I'm far from that. This is killing me, same as you. I feel all torn up inside, like I'm full of broken glass."

She nodded, eyes dosed. Her teeth had caught her lower lip and she gnawed on it for a moment. Then Molly opened her eyes and gazed at him.

"You're just you, Jack. There's nothing you can do. And you are strong. You were always the one we looked to because you were always the grown-up, y'know? The rest of us could be as immature as we wanted to be, but you didn't have a choice. You had to grow up too soon 'cause of your mom dying. Maybe it was selfish of us, but we relied on you for strength. Artie most of all. Sometimes I think half the reason he's .. . half the reason he was such a kid still was 'cause you were mature enough for both of you. He could screw around as much as he wanted and he knew you'd always be there if-"

Molly choked off the last few words. She gasped a

moment as though she had forgotten how to breathe, and then she glanced away.

"But I wasn't there," Jack said weakly. "I wasn't there, Molly."

Her eyes searching his now, Molly reached up to touch his face. "Don't blame yourself, Jack. There's nothing you could've done."

"I know," he agreed, and nodded grimly. "And besides, I'm supposed to be the strong one, right?"

They held each other then. Neither of them spoke for quite some time.

In the ensuing days, Jack spent as much time with Molly as he could. He managed to work on Monday and Tuesday, but in his off hours he would drive his Cherokee out to Dorchester to see her. Usually he would pick her up and take her out to a coffee shop in a better part of town. In each case, he took the long way around, not wanting to go through the neighborhood where the murder had happened.