The Dead Soul (31 page)

68

Sunday, September 14 - 12:39 P.M.

Jake was on his way to pick Dickie up when Dr. Kelsey text-messaged. He pulled over and called the pathologist.

“You ready? I got something.”

“Figured.”

“A match to that indent we molded from Lisa Marie’s back.”

Jake had nearly forgotten about it. “Go ahead.”

“It’s from a 1999 Shimano deep-sea fishing reel. The base, where all the gears are housed. The molds match perfectly.”

“You’re good, Doc.” Jake was impressed. “Excellent work.”

“We’re working on the dealers in the area. He could have gotten it online, but I doubt it. Those items, people like to try them out before they make a purchase.”

“Let me know when you do. And thanks for the call, Kelsey, not to mention staying on this. It’s Sunday.”

“Least I could do, Cooper.”

Before pulling back out into traffic, Jake keyed the information into his profiling program. Then sent an email to the K-PAC computer with the new details.

12:45 P.M.

Dickie wondered if Cal had turned the heat on in the room to bust his chops. He had sauna-like sweat pouring off his brow. His red hair, now a dark maroon, was saturated. Digging through the files was actually not that bad of a job. Beyond the fact that the dust made him a little congested, Dickie tossed aside files easily after determining that the years did not correspond with their case.

Then he picked up a tattered manila folder, its corners crushed and torn. Looked at the name on the little tab.

And that handwritten, faded marker pen changed everything.

The file contained Micah’s medical and educational records. Combing through, Dickie ran into a document with several diagrams stapled to it. The drawings appeared to be a room inside the orphanage where one of Micah’s students had been sent for detention. Apparently, a boy, Randy Meyers, 16, a transfer from St. Paul’s Parish in Southie, acted out in class one day. He grabbed a fellow student by the throat and choked him to the ground. The incident caused peripheral bruising around the kid’s neck, sending him to the infirmary. That same day the Meyers boy pulled a knife on another student. He was placed in a special time-out room overnight.

Stuart Micah came forward and said he wanted to go in and speak with the boy. The sisters had a meeting. Micah knew Meyers best. So they agreed.

Micah spent two hours talking to the kid.

When he left the room, the boy carved Micah’s name with his index fingernail all over the walls. Took him all night to do it. By morning the tip of his finger was bloodied and worn down to the middle of the nail.

“Holy shit,” Dickie said, slapping the page.

69

Sunday, September 14 –  1:00 P.M.

The man dressed as a priest did not own a gun. There was no emotion, no sense of power, behind the trigger of a weapon like that. On the other hand, there was not one chance in a million that Detective Cooper had sent his wife and child into hiding without some sort of armed guard. There had to be cops protecting Dawn and Brendan. The only way to get to them, the man who called himself Rainn Meyers knew, was to drive into where they were hiding, past the cops, then back out the same way.

“Use your head, not your muscle.” It was the one idiom that made sense Meyers had taken away from Father John O’Brien, his childhood parish priest.

Steve’s Market was near Baker Farm Drive, a mile from an unnamed dirt road that led to Father John’s cabin. It was the only general store for miles. Steve’s had been a staple since—so the sign out front proclaimed—1926. Steve sold Walden knickknacks. Fuel. Soda. Live bait for fishing. Maps and Save Walden Woods refrigerator magnets.

Father John pulled into Steve’s parking lot to refuel. Meyers stayed far enough behind the priest so as not to be seen. He sat with binoculars, watching and waiting. A winning chess player, Meyers knew, had to be patient.

After pumping fuel, the white-haired clergyman walked into the store to pay.  Looking on, Meyers hoped the priest would get caught up in a conversation with the clerk, which would open up that little window of opportunity he needed.

After blessing the store per Steve’s hasty plea, Father John got back into his car and pulled out of the driveway.

As he turned onto the unnamed dirt road and disappeared into the woods, Meyers popped up from behind Father and put a straight razor against the priest’s freckled neck. With such a small frame, Meyers had managed to wiggle his way into the backseat floorboards, covering himself with the Father’s suitcase and trench coat. Returning from the store, Father John never thought to look in the back.

“Keep driving.” Meyers sounded angry with his serial killer stage voice. “Do not touch anything but the steering wheel, or you will meet Jesus Christ today. I promise you that, Father.”

Father John looked in his mirror. He couldn’t get a clear view of the face.

“It’s okay, Father. You wouldn’t remember me, anyway.”

That voice. Father John recalled its distinctive affect. “Take me,” Father John said, driving through the woods. “Kill me. Leave the woman and child alone. They’ve done nothing to you.”

“The perfect martyr.” Meyers laughed. “Jesus would be proud of you.” Father John’s insides turned over every time the man used the Lord’s name in vain. Randy Meyers pressed the razor more firmly. “Keep driving, Padre.”

The road was riddled with ruts and large stones. Father John had to carefully watch where he was going. As they passed over the larger potholes, the shocks on his 1997 Ford Taurus not what they once were, Meyers bounced up into the mirror’s small rectangular window and Father John got a good look at him.

“You’re a priest now, I see.”

“Funny, Father. And you’re a comedian.” He nicked the priest’s skin to let him know the blade was not in his hand for show.

“This can end now, son. Right now. No more killing.”

“End? There is no
end
, Father. There is only a lull. Does persecution ever
end
? You should know all about that.” He had a tough time keeping the knife steady. Every bump sent his hand out a few inches, away from Father’s neck, then springing back, nicking a flabby section of skin hanging over the priest’s collar. The white cube of Father John’s choker was flecked with blood spots.

“I do know, son. Whatever happened to you, it can be overcome.”

“It’s too late for that now. Much too late. I need to finish what I started.”

“You do not have to.”

Meyers pushed himself up closer to the back of the driver’s seat. A rosary Father John had hanging from his rearview mirror crashed against the windshield as he hit the road ruts. Meyers got right in father’s ear and whispered, “If I see cops, I slit your neck like a water balloon. We clear on that, Father?”

“Yes, son.”

“Stop with the ‘son’ business. Won’t work with me.”

Father John finally got a good look at him. “Randy Meyers.”

“You
do
remember.” Meyers laughed mockingly. “Well, they call me the Optimist now. Just keep in mind, if you’re thinking of martyring yourself, today would not be the time to do that. I will kill you and drive the car there myself.” He pressed the blade against Father John’s neck again. “Are we clear on that?”

“Yes, Randy.”

Father John’s loaded rifle bumped the back of his left foot. He had no idea how he was going to get to it without Meyers seeing him.

70

Sunday, September 14 – 2:15 P.M.

Matikas had tried calling Jake and Dickie all weekend. Neither cop had answered. They were either blowing him off, or were out of a serviceable area. Matikas guessed the former. He even called the Bainbridge Sheriff’s Department, but Deputy Cal explained that Jake had picked Dickie up already. “Oh, musta been, what, an hour ago. They done took off outa here like there was a corn feed sale somewheres.”

The lieutenant pulled the phone away from his ear. Looked at it.
This guy serious
?

Screw Dickie and Jake, the lieutenant told himself. This was his collar. He was only calling them out of courtesy, anyway. Matikas had the post office run that name, Rainn Meyers. The clown in human resources wasn’t happy about getting up on a Sunday morning, but Matikas convinced him that he’d have a Boston blue up his ass every morning on his way to work if he didn’t help. Thus, within a half-hour, Matikas found himself at the Postal Operations Center office on Brookline Avenue, holding the addresses of two Rainn Meyers employed by the post office over the past twenty years. It was such a rare name. One guy was twenty-five. Died in a car accident six months before the first murder.

Scratch.

The other guy was single. He lived in Winthrop by himself. Just turned forty. He’d had some trouble on the job saying perverted things to a few women on his route. His boss took him off the road two years ago. He’d been on medical leave—suing the government for discrimination—for the past year.

No one had heard from him.

“That paint chip,” Matikas asked the cop riding to Meyers’s house with him, “we get a match?”

“No, but there’s an indication,” the cop said, reading from a report, “that this Meyers dude liked to dress up in his mailman’s uniform on his off days and approach females. Says here many of them were college kids.”

Matikas pumped his fist. “This is our guy. You ready for your first big bust, kiddo?”

“He even bought himself a used mail truck, the report says.”

Matikas felt a sense of urgency. Even anxiety. He’d show up Cooper and Shaughnessy, those arrogant pricks. He’d gain the captain’s trust back. He could see a photo on his wall of him and the captain, side by side, city service awards in hand.

Two troopers made it to the scene merely an hour after Matikas ordered them to watch the house. Both reported seeing “curtains move” in one of the bedrooms.

Meyers was home.

Five cruisers followed Matikas. Depending on the layout of the house, the lieutenant explained over the two-way, he wanted to surround the place. “Drive on the lawn. Tear it up. I don’t give a shit.” He told the team to take action in three swift moves—pull up, approach the door with weapons in hand, kick it in. “Let’s grab this sonofabitch and get him on the floor, facedown. No questions.”

“Riley?” Matikas said to the cop riding with him.

“Lieutenant?”

“After the collar, you call your source at the
Globe
and leak the arrest. Use the name ‘Optimist’ in your description. Make sure you give him our names. Tell him we have no idea where Cooper or Shaughnessy are. Got it?”

“Consider it done, Lieutenant.”

71

Sunday, September 14 – 2:25 P.M.

Jake and Dickie were on I-93, driving past Medford, near the suburbs of North Boston. Dickie checked his voicemail—or calls he didn’t want to answer as they came in. When he heard Matikas’s voice announce they were converging on Rainn Meyers’s house, Dickie looked at the digital time display on the dashboard.

“Move it, Jake. Matikas got a lead on Rainn Meyers. They’re at his house.”

Jake was furious.

Dickie hit the button for the blue light and siren.

Jake floored the gas pedal.

“Ray … what a bastard.”

72

Sunday, September 14 – 2:32 P.M.

One cop set his right shoulder against the doorjamb leading into Rainn Meyers’s small, single-family Cape-style home at the end of Summer Street in Winthrop, the back of the home facing the Belle Island Reservation. Matikas and his crew stood on the stoop, weapons in hand, badges hanging from their necks, blue BPD windbreakers fluttering in the wind coming in off Broad Sound. It was cloudy out. Looked like rain. A blue wearing a bulletproof vest, helmet and face shield, brandished a double-barrel shotgun and faced the door.

As ordered, the other blues surrounded the house.

Matikas motioned with a head nod that it was time to go in.

“Police!” screamed the officer dressed like Robocop as he kicked the door in, and they all flushed into the living room, one after the other.

Rainn Meyers was not there.

Matikas ran toward a bedroom down the short hallway.

The door was closed. “Shh …” The lieutenant heard a television.

One, two, three
… he whispered, counting off with his free hand, motioning for Robocop to kick this door in, too.

The bedroom door came right off the hinges.

Rainn Meyers was in bed, just waking up from the ruckus going on inside his house. Around him were the remnants from a recent delivery pizza and powdered doughnut binge. An old western on American Movie Classics flickered on the television. John Wayne, Richard Widmark.

There was a poster of Bruce Lee, that infamous
Enter the Dragon
pose, tacked to the wall above Meyers’s bed. A shiatsu ran around in circles, barking, wagging its rat-like tail. There was dirty laundry all over the floor. Had the smell of a locker room on game day.

Meyers weighed, Matikas guessed by looking at him, about four or maybe five hundred pounds. He reminded the lieutenant of one of those guys you see on the Discovery Channel who cannot get out of bed and needs the fire department to help.

“Damn,” Matikas said. He holstered his pistol. Put his hands on his waist. Walked over to the window, spread the curtains to let some light in. “Get on the radio. All clear here.”

Just waking up, Rainn Meyers said, “I thought you were my housekeeper.”