The Murder Channel (18 page)

“You may have trouble getting there from here,” he said. “It’s still snowing.”

AS I CLIMBED FROM THE LOFT, RALPH WAS
heading for the door.

“Gotta do the linen,” he said, ready to make his tour of the wards and units, distribute clean sheets and pillowcases and collect the dirty bedding. “After lunch I’ll take a break. I’ll bring some food.”

I switched on the small TV.

“The police media relations department has scheduled a news conference for nine o’clock this morning,” Lily Nelson said. “We’ll be going to that live. In a related story, BTT’s former news director and now the station’s owner, Wendy Pouldice, is in seclusion at an undisclosed location. Early this morning, Ms. Pouldice had this to say about the carnage that has swept the city since Felix Zrbny’s escape.”

Pouldice stood at a lectern, gripping its edge with one hand and balling tissues with the other. “Bob Britton was a friend,” she said, “not just an employee, but one of the best newscasters in the business, and a close, personal friend. He will be missed.
The sadness I feel, that all of us at Boston Trial Television feel, is immense and unremitting. In the wake of this bloodbath in Boston, we have become a city under siege.”

“She is an actress,” I said.

“In seclusion at an undisclosed location” meant her retreat on the Connecticut River near Claremont, New Hampshire. She had mentioned the place, her “big empty cave where I do nothing but watch the river flow.”

When we talked during our visits, Pouldice seemed to understand what I wanted. I would give her exclusive rights to my story. I would answer all questions. She would give me my sister’s killer.

She had waffled on my only demand. There was no way to be certain, she said. Seventeen years have passed, she said. Then, after her fourth visit, she called on the phone.

“I think I might have something,” she said.

Pouldice told me about a girl named Theresa Stallings. “The kid was with a friend, playing basketball in Dorchester. A few days before she disappeared, a red-haired guy in a white car was hanging around the playground. He got out of the car, smoked, watched the kids play, got back in the car. It was like he was waiting. He had no reason to be there.”

“Tell me about Theresa,” I said.

“She was fifteen, tall for her age, dark hair, brown
eyes. She was wearing gray shorts and a Celtics shirt, thirty-three, Larry Bird’s number.”

I considered telling her where she could find Theresa. I did not.

“The man who took Theresa took my sister,” I said.

“Felix, the abductions are six years apart. A white car? Who keeps a car six years, especially an American car? And a red-haired guy? Boston probably has more than most cities.”

“Use your sources,” I told her, and left it at that.

But I knew.

Now on TV, I watched a police captain named Newhall at a different podium, this one emblazoned with a police shield. “We’ve all had a rough twenty-four hours,” he said. “It doesn’t help that we’ve got the worst snowstorm since seventy-eight going on out there. This will work the way it always does. I can tell you some things, I can’t tell you others.”

He itemized the body count and was fairly accurate about who killed whom. They did not know the name of the man who killed Sable.

“We have eleven members of the group known as Vigil in custody,” Newhall said. “Felix Zrbny remains at large at this time.”

Newhall sounded like Broderick Crawford in
Highway Patrol.
At large. Ten-four. Cops on the alert. What did that mean? Cops are paid to be aware.

“We have had no cooperation from Vigil. We have questioned the acknowledged leader of the group. Mr. John Jay Johnson, also known as J-Cubed, also known as Dermott Fremont, has refused to assist us with this investigation.”

A small insert appeared on the screen, a file video of the man who was all Js. He was cuffed, and cops led him into a courthouse. He turned as he walked through the door. I saw him in profile—his prominent nose, his brush-cut red hair—precisely as I had seen him in his white car when he grabbed Levana.

RALPH RETURNED AT ONE P.M.

He fished through the large pocket that extended across the bottom of his sweatshirt. He produced rolls, slices of ham and cheese wrapped in a napkin, and a small piece of white cake.

“If you don’t want the cake,” he said.

I pushed it across the small table to him, cracked open a roll and stuffed it with ham and cheese.

“Marty Fenwick’s got a pool going about when they catch you,” Ralph said. “Five dollars a date. The first ten days got covered right away. Only a couple of guys figure you’ll last longer than that.”

“You want to make some money?”

Ralph barked his short laugh. “I got no money to make money with.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a twenty
from Deputy Finneran’s bills. “Make a side bet,” I said. “Day after tomorrow.”

“You ain’t staying, Felix?”

“You want to go with me?”

“Oh Jesus no.” He stuffed cake into his mouth. “I ain’t going nowhere.”

“It’s like it was before, Ralph. I know what I have to do.”

“They’re gonna stick you in Walpole this time,” he cautioned.

“I know who killed my sister,” I told him. “I think I know why everything got so fucked up out there last night.”

“You gotta make things right,” he said with a nod as tears formed in his eyes. “You got to finish up.”

“And you’re going to make some money,” I said, tossing the twenty at him, “maybe enough to get a new TV, one of those small color ones.”

He yanked himself away from whatever he was thinking and switched on the TV. “I want to hear what they’re saying before I go back to work.”

I ate my makeshift sandwich.

“They’re showing Riddle’s Bar,” he said.

I stuffed a second roll with ham and cheese and joined Ralph on the edge of the cot. “You know where that place is?” I asked.

“Terry used to go out eight stops on South Huntington, then she had to walk two blocks on Centre Street. I don’t know what direction. There’s J-Cubed.”

This time the video showed Vigil’s leader climbing out of a full-size white Ford and entering the bar. “He’s bald,” I said.

Ralph stared at the screen.

The next sequence showed Lucas Frank standing in front of my house. “Why did he go there?”

“To find out about you.”

“Who’s that with him?”

“An ex-cop named Waycross. You killed his wife, Felix. Don’t you remember?”

“No,” I said. “He looks nothing like he did fifteen years ago when he arrested me.”

“He figure in this deal?”

“He did what he had to do.”

“Felix, when are you going?”

“Tonight.”

“It’s still snowing out there. Jesus. Two feet and more coming.”

“It slows down the world,” I said. “Ralph, did you ever figure that maybe you should have been in Walpole?”

He shrugged. “The docs said I was crazy.”

“Do you think you are?”

I could not tell whether Ralph was considering my question or immersing himself in the police press conference. “I think maybe I was,” he said finally. “Now I think I’m just getting old.”

I had questions about my own mind. “How do you think that cop feels?” I asked, pointing at Captain Newhall.

He hesitated. “He’s doing his job.”

“He sounds tired, maybe angry.”

“He probably didn’t get much sleep.”

I tried a different approach. “When Terry used to visit, how did she feel about coming here?”

He continued to watch TV. “Sometimes she made good connections from the streetcar to the bus. Sometimes not so good. She didn’t like the smell of this place. Mostly, she came and she went.”

“Didn’t it bother her to visit you here? Didn’t she wish you were outside?”

“Nah. She always figured I’d get around to killing her.”

RAY BOLTON SAT AT HIS DESK. HE LOOKED
as bad as I felt.

“There’s coffee,” he said.

I poured a cup and sat opposite him. “Stallings,” I said.

“That’s right. You wanted to look at the file.”

He yanked open a drawer and hauled out two file folders. Combined, they were three inches thick. For an abduction and suspected homicide, that’s nothing.

“This is it?”

“That’s one of the reasons this case bothers me. Middle of the afternoon, sunny day, heavily populated area, plenty of traffic, pedestrians, a uniformed cop in a cruiser a block away, a furniture company repossessing a sofa across the street, and nobody saw anything.”

I flipped open the top folder and paged through summary sheets until I found the case log. Each action taken during an investigation is entered chronologically in the log; officers append supplementary
reports and exhibits later in the case file. The document has a language and shorthand all its own.

The R/O, reporting officer, was A. Hirsch, the first officer on the scene. “1500. Met by neighborhood residents (see list below), and witness, Margaret (Maggie) Winship, 13YO-F, W, Br/Br, 95, 5-3. V: Theresa M. Stallings, 15YO-F, W, Br/Br, 105, 5-6. APB radio, 1504. Assigned case number 0019438-88.”

Hirsch’s narrative followed. Maggie Winship was in shock, sitting in the middle of the basketball court surrounded by neighbors. It was just as Bolton had said. Winship could not talk, and nobody else had anything to talk about.

“The log doesn’t include who called this in,” I said.

“Adult female,” Bolton said with a sigh. “She called on a direct line to one of the desks in Homicide. Never said who she was. There’s a separate sheet later in the narrative.”

The report of the initial event in this investigation appeared as an appended item, a one-paragraph afterthought.

“Why do you insist on calling this chronological case filing?”

“We’ve been through this, Lucas,” he said.

“With the exception of the log, the sheets are appended when they’re completed, not in accordance with the investigation’s own timeline. I was
looking at reports yesterday that had calls made from the Dayle residence days after she was dead, and from the Waycross residence hours after she was dead.”

“I think the first time you pointed out log inconsistencies to me was twenty-five years ago in your kitchen.”

“Didn’t do any damn good,” I grumbled, reading the one-paragraph insert. “Were these direct phone lines to the investigators’ desks public information?”

“They’re not in the book, but they’re printed on our business cards.”

“The location where she was grabbed is two blocks from Ashmont Station.”

Bolton nodded. “Like I said, a heavily populated area.”

“The detective who took the call, A. Garcia …”

“Andrea. She’s with Baltimore P.D. now. The call came in on her line.”

“Had she been investigating anything out there in the previous year?”

“I’d have to look it up. What are you getting at?”

“If she had a case that required her to be in Dorchester, and she conducted any interviews, she’d leave her card.”

Bolton spun around to his computer, tapped the keys, and waited. “The Levesque shooting in May that year. Dorchester Avenue. That was Richard
Hamden’s case. Let’s see. Garcia assisted. They wrapped it in three days.”