Текст книги "Measure of Darkness"
Автор книги: Chris Jordan
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Chapter Sixteen
Baked Alaska
Three steps from the dining room, with the pleasant buzz of ginger still humming in his mouth, Jack Delancey reaches for the cell phone vibrating in his right trouser pocket. An incoming call from Glenn Tolliver, of the Massachusetts State Police. Funny, he was just thinking that the perfect finish to the meal might be a leisurely stroll along Comm Ave while puffing on a short La Gloria. Maybe if Piggy is in town, the better option would be Cigar Masters, with a nice port or cognac.
Jack flips open the phone, effectively wrecking his plans.
“One question,” Tolliver says brusquely, sirens in the background. “Did you happen to drop by Jonny Bing’s boat today? Or his ship or yacht or whatever it is?”
“I did.”
“Good answer. Get down here.”
“The marina? What happened?”
“That’s what you’re going to explain. Pronto, if not sooner.”
“Twenty minutes.”
Some idiot tipped over a box truck on the Southeast Expressway, scattering a few tons of watermelons, so it’s more like forty minutes before Jack eases his boaty Lincoln Town Car into the Quincy Bay Marina visitor’s parking lot. Hard to find a space, what with all the fire trucks and patrol cars. The last flush of late June twilight lingers, so all the flashing lights make for a festive sunset. If he didn’t know better he’d think a traveling carnival had set up along the waterfront, complete with glittering arcs of spray from the fireboats out in the harbor.
The object of all this attention is the Lady Luck. To all outward appearances Bing’s massive yacht is unharmed, but Jack has a pretty good idea this is about more than a false alarm. He finds Glenn Tolliver in uniform, confabbing with plainclothes detectives, state and local. Tolliver catches sight of him and dismisses his troops.
“Hey,” says Jack, trying to sound casual. Captain Tolliver in full regalia is an imposing sight. “What’s with the bag?”
“Never mind my uniform. I want to know everything you know.”
“That’ll take a lifetime.”
“Can the wiseass.”
“Fine. No problem. Is Bing alive or dead?”
“I’m asking the questions. Over there,” he says, jutting his massive chin at a white canvas crime scene tent that’s been staked into the asphalt a few feet from the dock system.
Jack follows him to the tent and sits, as indicated, in one of several folding chairs situated near a portable table equipped with a couple of big coffee urns. Tolliver grabs himself a cup, doesn’t bother offering. Not that Jack, spoiled by the good stuff, has any interest in gray, parboiled caffeine.
Tolliver takes a seat, heaves a sigh. “What a mess,” he says. “I was speaking at a graduation ceremony. Supposed to.”
“Your daughter.”
“My daughter, yeah. Made it through eighth grade. With honors, actually. My ex was there, of course. And I get the call ten minutes before I’m due at the microphone, prepared to drone on about how the future has yet to be made, and how they’ll be making it. Her generation.”
“I thought she was in, like, first grade.”
“She was, seven years ago. Time flies, Jack. They say life is like a roll of toilet paper—the closer you get to the end, the faster it rolls.”
“That’s a lovely image, Glenn. What happened to Bing?”
The big trooper’s smile is thin enough to have been cut with a scalpel. “You first. Your visit with Jonny Bing. Word for word, or as close as you can get.”
“No problem,” says Jack, and begins his recitation.
Fifteen minutes later, Tolliver heaves another sigh. “That’s it?”
“My best recollection.”
“Ace interrogator like you, there’s still no clear indication as to who might have killed Professor Keener, or why? Assuming, for the sake of argument, it wasn’t your pal Shane.”
“It wasn’t, and no. Bing seems genuinely puzzled. Convincing on the subject of how the sudden death of his partner might wreck the company and ruin his investment. If he’s lying, he’s damn good at it. Which he might be, for all I know.”
Tolliver studies the back of his meaty hand. “Maybe.”
“My gut says the only thing he was holding back concerns Keener’s missing kid.”
“Holding back what?”
Jack shrugs. “Claimed he never heard of Keener having a child, in or out of wedlock. But he knows something. I’m going to have another go at him.”
“No,” Tolliver says. “You’re not.”
“I’m not?”
“Not unless you can commune with the dead.”
The news doesn’t exactly shock Jack, given the general mood, not to mention the overwhelming response from law enforcement. “Well, that sucks,” he says, lightly drumming his well-manicured fingers on the tabletop. “How’d it go down?”
“You know I can’t share details of an ongoing investigation.”
“Walk me through it, maybe something will pop. Something he said that I couldn’t recall at first. I’ll share.”
Tolliver favors him with a sour look. “You neglected to tell me something, in your exhaustive recollection of the interview?”
“I’m just saying.”
The big man considers. “Walk with me,” he says.
Lady Luck has had a bath, mostly seawater from the fireboats. Jack can smell the tang of salt, and under that a lingering odor of gasoline and smoke, and something worse than smoke. He’s not keen about getting the drips on his shoes—fine leather doesn’t like salt—but knows better than to complain as Tolliver stomps through the slop in his highly polished knee-high dress boots, heading along a companionway. They haven’t bothered with crime scene tape because the entire yacht is a crime scene.
As the big state cop leads the way, he says, “Surveillance cameras show you boarding this tub at 10:20 a.m., exiting by the same route at 11:10 a.m. Sound about right?”
“Yup.”
“Silly question, but was Bing alive when you left him?”
“Not a silly question, and yes, he was. Alive and more or less relaxed. Certainly unaware that something bad was about to happen.”
“No security on board, you said. Or staff.”
“Yeah, and I thought that was a little odd. But then Jonny Bing is—I mean was—more than a little odd. Wealthy enough to be eccentric, I guess. He apologized for the lack of fawning servants—his words—and said the crew had a few days off because the boat would soon be leaving for Bermuda. So, far as I could tell, he was alone. But then he could have had a dozen blondes stashed in his master bedroom, for all I know.”
Tolliver glances back. “Or a dozen disco boys.”
Jack hazards a raised eyebrow. “Is that the word on Bing?”
“Word is Jonny wasn’t particular as to gender. But you got the blond part right, apparently. And it was only one. Maybe he was cutting down.”
“So it was a lover’s tiff?”
“Nah,” Tolliver says, gesturing for Jack to step ahead of him. “Go through that door or hatch or whatever they call it, then turn left.”
“Door, I think,” says Jack, lifting his cuffs as he steps into about an inch of standing water flecked with suds of chemical foam.
Unlike Jack and Tolliver, the on-site crime team members are wearing white rubber boots and white disposable overalls. They have digital cameras set up on tripods, laser measuring devices, a chemical sniffer, all the toys. The objects of forensic interest lie on a partially melted bed—a giant round mattress, like something out of an old Hugh Hefner fantasy—set up on a hardwood pedestal. Behind the thronelike bed, the curving wall is mirrored. Narrow, vertical mirrors joined together like some giant diamond. More like cubic zirconia. Because to Jack the whole setup looks cheesy, very unlike the elegant salon where Bing had made him welcome, or the rest of the luxuriously appointed yacht. Maybe the sleaze of the playboy bedroom made it appealing, a retro thing. Different strokes.
Jonny Bing, still recognizable even in sudden, violent death, lies on his side among the pink satin sheets. Pink from the blood that was washed away before it had time to soak in. In the strobe flash of the cameras, the glittery wetness makes him seem almost alive. Almost. Bing’s left eye looks wrong.
“Shot to the head took him down,” Tolliver explains. “We think small caliber because there’s no apparent exit wound. Same with the shot to the heart—no exit. So, a classic double tap. Same deal with the boyfriend, except he got it in the forehead instead of the eye. Small entry wound, no apparent exit. Bullet bounces around, it’s like an instant Cuisinart for the brain.” The trooper gives Jack a look, almost friendly, like the old days when they were professional colleagues of a sort. “Tell that to Naomi Nantz the next time she dices up sweetmeats, what a bullet does when it rattles around inside a skull.”
“She’ll appreciate that,” Jack says, smiling but not feeling it. Feeling instead the slosh of contaminated water soaking into his Italian leather shoes.
“The precision of this, both vics hit exactly the same way, makes me favor the lone gunman theory.”
“Looks that way,” Jack agrees.
The second victim, assumed to be the sexual partner because, like Bing, he’s naked, tangled in satin sheets, is a Caucasian youth with shoulder-length bleached-blond hair. In life the victim had been lithe and athletic, at least a foot taller than his partner. On the floor a few yards from the giant bed is the real puzzle. Lying on its side like a partially charred log is the fully clothed body of an Asian male. Thirtysomething, is Jack’s guess, but he could be off ten years in either direction, on account of the fire damage, or whatever made the man’s flesh start to slough off.
“You’ll notice the human barbecue has a gun in its hand.” The big trooper crouches, pointing. “See the fingers? They look broken to me. We’ll know for sure after the autopsy, but the M.E., who hates getting his feet wet just like you, he concurs: fingers busted. Like somebody put the gun in his hand, had to force it.”
“Made this guy fire the weapon?”
Tolliver stands up, snorts. “Are you serious? A double, double tap? No extra shots fired? Whoever did this is a genuine marksman, a skilled assassin. Not some frozen corpse with a busted hand.”
Jack’s eyes are watering from the smell. “Frozen? What are you talking about?”
“This guy here. He’s charred on the outside, frozen underneath. M.E. tried for a liver temp, said it was like bumping up against a stone. Pretty neat trick, eh? We’re calling him Baked Alaska.”
Jack takes a step back, letting his eyes drift over the scene, putting it all together. “Okay. Bing and his buddy are shot in bed. The shooter then drags in a frozen corpse, plants the gun, douses the place with gasoline? That’s your theory of the crime? The assassin was creating a particular scenario, or attempting to?”
Tolliver nods approvingly. “Pretty quick for a retired dude. Yeah, and I’ll bet my next pulled-pork sandwich that Mr. Baked Alaska will turn out to be connected to one of the local Asian gangs.”
“So it’s supposed to look like a gang hit that went wrong somehow?”
“Yeah. Might have worked, too, but the genius who set this up didn’t know about the fire suppression system on board. He got ignition but no liftoff.”
“Surveillance?”
“No cameras in the bedroom, which is a surprise. Wouldn’t have surprised me if that little horn-dog Jonny Bing wanted to keep mementos of his conquests, but apparently not. There is a pretty elaborate surveillance system in place elsewhere, covering the hallways, engine room, bridge, decks and so on. The bad boy who did this was smart enough to figure that out, and yanked the hard drive. I’m assuming he got to the surveillance DVR after he killed the victims, but before he attempted to torch the place. So he had a plan. Messed up with the fire part, but he got away undetected. Which is a genuine mystery. And you know how I hate mysteries.”
Jack frowns. “Wait. You clocked me on the marina surveillance but not the shooter?”
“Not so far. We’re assuming the shooter approached from the water, using the ship as a screen from the marina surveillance cameras, which cover the floating dock system, but obviously can’t see through the ship. We’re checking any and all surveillance systems all along the bay, from Boston Harbor to Hull, but that will take a while.”
Jack has had enough of the smell. He carefully wades out to the companionway, trying to keep his trouser cuffs dry, and failing. “This sucks,” he mutters.
“What’s the big deal?” Tolliver responds impatiently. “Take your fancy threads to the dry cleaner. Bill it as an expense.”
“No, it’s not that,” Jack says. “I’m just thinking, if I hadn’t dropped in on Jonny Bing, he’d probably still be alive.”
The big trooper shrugs. “Maybe. Or maybe he was already scheduled for demolition.”
“Yeah.”
“I’d be curious to know what your boss thinks.”
“Me, too,” says Jack.
Chapter Seventeen
In the Name of Shane
Kidder has to force himself to drive just below the speed limit. What he wants to do is put the pedal to the metal, open the windows and dry the goo out of his hair. He’d attempted to rinse away the gunk with seawater, once he’d managed to get clear of the marina, but it still feels like he’s been basted with a sticky white sauce that makes his skin itch. Some kind of foamy stuff jetting from a system of tiny nozzles he’d never even noticed, and certainly hadn’t been notified about.
When it happened he’d been madder than a wet hen—more like psychotic rooster pumped for a cockfight—and his heart had been pounding because he knew the sudden discharge of foam would be triggering a remote fire alarm. So he’d been fleeing the scene from the moment the crap drenched him, and a good thing, too. The local fire trucks were at the marina in less than ten minutes, way ahead of the slow-moving fire tugs, and if the freakin’ outboard hadn’t started on the first try he’d have been nabbed for sure. But it had started—hurray Yamaha!—and he had managed to ease away from the marina and put a half mile or so between himself and Lady Luck before the flashing lights and sirens arrived. Flooded with the adrenaline thrill of a narrow escape, and of having freshly killed, he eventually worked his way down the busy coastline of Quincy Bay, to the place on shore where he’d left his vehicle, and made his getaway.
Luck: you had to have it in this business. No matter what your skill level—and his own was high—you still needed luck, he knew that in his bones, and so far his luck was holding.
Rather than risk heading north through the city, getting stuck in Boston traffic while under possible pursuit, he’d opted to head west onto good old 128, loop all the way around and back up to the north. Cost him an extra hour of discomfort, longing for a hot soapy shower, while forcing himself to leave it on cruise control, keep to the right-hand lane like a good little citizen.
Finally, back to base without further incident. That’s how he’d report it. Target terminated. Keep it simple. The gooksicle had been his own idea and it hadn’t worked out, but so what? It would definitely add to the confusion, and that was a good thing. Nothing to apologize for, no excuses that needed making.
The man who calls himself Kidder punches in the code, causing the paneled door of the cedar-shingled garage to lift. Once inside, garage door sealed, he slips out of the vehicle, strips off his soggy clothing and pads barefoot to the shower located in the first-floor exercise room. Six, count ’em, six showerheads, steaming and clean. He luxuriates in the stinging warmth, cleansing away the loathsome goo, using plenty of soap and body lotion. The place may be referred to as a guest cottage, but it has all the amenities. An excellent, if rather small, gym furnished with top-flight equipment, a nicely appointed entertainment center—love that Bose!—a superb kitchen, a casual-at-first-glance-but-really-formal dining room and three upstairs guest suites, each with a distant view of the sea.
Oh yeah, and the basement safe room, disguised for the pleasure of the guests as a “rumpus room,” complete with a top-grade billiard table, every kind of game controller, plus bath, bar, kitchenette—even spare beds concealed in the puffy sofas. Very handy and, indeed, the reason why this particular residence had been selected for the operation. Simple enough to swap around the dead-bolt system, clip the phone and alarm lines and make the safe room into a very well-appointed cage. Whenever Kidder has to leave the premises, whether on a particular assignment or just to stretch his legs, he simply puts New Mommy and the Chinese brat into the basement and locks the impregnable door “for their own protection.”
As he dries himself, puffing his skin to a healthy pink, he thinks about the present situation, anticipating the inevitability of change. So far the female, who can sometimes be troublesome or mouthy, has acquiesced in the name of Shane, whom she appears to worship on some level that Kidder doesn’t get. The big guy was about as infallible as your average pope, from what Kidder can gather, but so far invoking his name has worked, kept her in line, as well as deeply in the dark. Eventually she’ll rebel, they always do, and when that happens he’ll require further instruction.
Kidder has the answer, when it comes to that.
Chapter Eighteen
Gaba-dabba-doo
Just so you know, Naomi Nantz has a thing about leaving the residence. She’s not exactly agoraphobic, so far as I can tell. It’s not like she goes all wobbly when she steps out the door, or has a panic attack, nothing like that. But she does so reluctantly, and only for a purpose—a dentist or doctor appointment, for example—and sometimes a few weeks will go by without her leaving these familiar confines at all. If she feels the need for sunshine and fresh air she goes to the solarium and opens a window, or joins me up on the roof deck for a view of the Charles and a little breeze in her face. Rarely does she hit the street while on a case. That’s what investigators and operatives are for, to do the legwork, to go out in the world and bring back information she can gnaw on, like a really intelligent bulldog with an interesting bone. A beautiful bulldog with eyes that can bore through the human heart, with all its deviance and deception, seeking the truth.
On the morning after Jonny Bing’s murder we’re in the breakfast nook, me and Naomi and Jack and Teddy. Naomi in one of her quiet, thinking modes, processing information based on the meager evidence. Most of us—me, for sure—are more than a little flummoxed by the rapid turn of events. A famous kid finder suspected in the murder of a genius professor with a missing child, a billionaire financier and his bedmate executed, a semi-frozen body left at the scene, what does it all mean? Jack brooding because boss lady is keeping an open mind on the possibility that Shane might be guilty, for reasons yet to be determined. Meanwhile, Mrs. Beasley is fussing over us to relieve the tension. Sensing the gloomy mood, she’s trying to tempt us with a rather amazing variation on sourdough French toast, which involves a cast-iron fry pan that she calls a “spider,” and a butane torch. Naomi has nodded her approval—she’s reading her newspapers, maintaining silence—and Jack and I are on second helpings, but Teddy Boyle has thus far declined, much to Beasley’s consternation.
“But you love my sourdough bread,” she says, shaking her silver-haired head in consternation. “You love maple syrup—you put syrup on Cheerios! So what’s the problem?”
Teddy shrugs and smiles his beatific little grin. Today his hair is newly tinged with a disturbing shade of pink, and he’s swapped out his nostril ring for a small gold stud.
“It’s nothing personal,” he explains to Beasley. “I’m not eating animals today.”
“French toast is not an animal.”
“Eggs and milk,” Teddy points out. “Product of animals, and therefore animal in nature.”
Beasley takes her hands out of her apron pockets, looking stunned. “You’ve gone vegan?”
“Just for today. Cleansing.”
“You’re cleansing.” She considers that, makes some sort of calculation and nods to herself. “Fine. As it so happens, I know a special variation that will work with French toast. No eggs, no milk. No animal product of any kind. Give me ten minutes.”
“Wow,” Teddy says. “Thanks. I’ll have two slices, please.”
Nine minutes later Beasley beams as the rail-thin boy scoffs up her syrup-soaked slices in less time than it takes for Naomi to put down her newspaper and say, “No eggs? No milk? How is that possible?”
The question is purely rhetorical, since Beasley will not discuss her trade secrets while a meal is being consumed, if ever. Also, at precisely that moment a small wall-mounted bulb begins to flash, indicating an incoming call on boss lady’s private, ultra-secure landline. The one with the number restricted to a chosen few. She takes the call in an alcove off the kitchen—a pantry, really—and returns to us with a gleam in her eyes, and the trace of a smile on her lips.
“Randall Shane,” she says. “Dropped off at Mass General E.R. within the last fifteen minutes.”
And so it is that Naomi Nantz takes leave of the residence, not at a walk but at a full run. On a good day the hospital is a brisk twenty-minute saunter from the residence, but time is of the essence, so we race to Commonwealth Avenue, cross the mall at a run and hail a taxi going east. Basically we hijacked the Haitian driver, who mistakenly thought he was off duty and idling at the curb, sipping a Starbucks. Naomi, accepting no excuses, declares an emergency and directs him up Storrow Drive to Embankment Road, and around the loop to the Fruit Street entrance. Four minutes, door-to-door, and the shaken driver—instructions having been crisply issued directly into his right ear—accepts a hundred-dollar bill and flees the scene, looking shell-shocked by the experience. The sirens behind us could be from an approaching ambulance, but are more likely the local cops, having been alerted to a yellow taxi briefly hitting ninety in the Back Bay neighborhood.
We’re about to enter the E.R. when Jack Delancey screeches to a halt in his big Lincoln, activates his blinking parking lights and joins us.
“Told you I could beat a damn taxicab,” he says, straightening his tie as we step through the sliding door.
“But you didn’t.”
“Close enough,” he says. “Who was that on the phone? Who gave you the heads-up?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Naomi says, avoiding his gaze as she quickens her pace. “We haven’t much time. The police will figure it out soon enough.”
“The Benefactor,” Jack confides to me. “Mr. Big, whoever he is. That’s my guess.”
Naomi Nantz in full order-issuing mode is a thing to behold. Just as the taxi driver found himself obeying her commands to dart through city traffic, the duty nurse, a hardened soul who looks like she herself could direct battalions without flinching, is soon escorting us to a curtained cubicle, where an E.R. doc is attempting to assess the condition of the huge slab of a man more or less unconscious on the gurney, eyelids fluttering.
So far as I can tell Shane is wearing the same clothes he had on when they kicked in the windows and took him down. His shirt has been opened for examination, revealing his enormous chest and diaphragm. There are no obvious bruises, but who knows what they’ve done to him inside? His complexion is a sickening shade of gray and his eyes have sunk so deeply into his skull that he looks to have aged a decade, at least. Wherever he’s been, whatever has been done to him, it’s taken a terrible toll.
“Bastards,” Jack growls, his voice catching.
The startled doctor, a blonde, cherub-cheeked female who at first glance appears to be about twelve years old, wants to know what connection we have to the patient.
“Are you the ones who dumped this man at the curb with a note pinned to his shirt?”
Naomi soon sets her straight, without sharing any of the more interesting details. “The patient is our associate. We have reason to believe he was abducted for purposes of interrogation.”
“Interrogation?” the young doc shoots back. “More like tortured, from the look of him.”
“The note pinned to his shirt,” Naomi says. “What did it say?”
At first the young doctor seems determined not to share information but, under Naomi’s persuasive gaze, soon changes her mind. “Just three words, one of them nonsense. The first two were ‘Randall Shane,’ I’m assuming that’s his name. I put him into our database, but he’s never been admitted here.”
“The third word?”
The doc shrugs. “‘Gaba,’ whatever that means.”
“Gaba,” I say. “Like baby talk?”
“No,” says Naomi, remaining focused on the doctor. “As a matter of fact, ‘gaba’ explains it. Gamma-aminobutyric acid. If the word had been ‘GABA analogue’ or ‘GABAergic’ you’d have understood immediately, as you were intended to.”
The young E.R. doc has turned crimson. “Of course! He’s been drugged with some sort of barbiturate, or benzodiazepine.”
“Possibly both,” Naomi suggests. “He was taken down with a very powerful tranquilizer dart, just for starters.”
The doc’s jaw drops. “What! What the hell is going on here? Who is this guy?”
Before anyone can form a reply, Shane’s head lolls to one side and his sunken eyelids open. Instantly, Jack is there, crouching beside the gurney. “Randall? Can you talk? We don’t have much time, old friend. Cops are on the way.”
Shane gives him a loopy grin and says, “Bah-doo.” Working his lips, struggling to form a word.
Jack looks up. “Whatever they drugged him with, it’s starting to wear off.”
“Anything you can give him?” Naomi asks the doc. “To bring him around quicker?”
The E.R. doc looks deeply offended by the suggestion. “No way. Not without a full assessment. This man needs to be admitted and monitored.”
“He may know the location of a missing child,” Naomi says, pressing. “A five-year-old boy.”
The doc remains adamant. “I can’t treat him until I know what he’s been drugged with.”
“We’ve established that,” Naomi reminds her patiently. “One of the GABAergics.”
The doctor shakes her head, crosses her arms defensively. “Because ‘gaba’ was scrawled on a piece of paper? Not good enough. We need to determine the specific drug. Child or no child, I will not put this patient’s life at risk because you want to chat.”
“Fine,” says Naomi, turning her attention to the man on the gurney. “Mr. Shane? The clock is ticking. Very soon you’ll be taken into custody. Do you know where the boy is? Or who took him?”
Still unable to raise his head, or keep his eyes focused, the big guy is obviously concentrating, devoting all of his energy to the task of making his mouth and tongue function. “Joey,” he manages to say. “Joey Keener. Five years old.”
“Joey, yes,” says Naomi. “Is he alive?”
Shane manages to nod. “Yes,” he says. “Alive.”
“Where is he? Can you guess? Anything, Shane. Give us something to work with.”
He desperately tries to form another word, and then his eyes lose focus and he lapses back into semiconsciousness, totally spent.
Ten seconds later the cops arrive.
