Liam Mulligan: Cliff Walk Part 15

"Most good things are."

"I didn't see you at the press conference," she said.

"Lomax had me cover it off the TV."

"The attorney general holds a press conference to announce that a serial killer is on the loose, and the Dispatch doesn't bother to show up?"

"Appalling isn't it? But it's the sort of thing that's bound to happen after three-quarters of our reporters are given walking papers."

"Hard to ask questions if you're not there, Mulligan."

"Even harder to get answers."

"Anything you want to ask now?"

"Yeah. Have you heard from Captain Parisi yet?"

"I have."

"And?"

"He's mad as h.e.l.l. Says I've turned his case into a quote, f.u.c.kin' circus, unquote."

"And you said?"

"That parents have a right to know someone out there is butchering kids."

The operatic theme song for Channel 10 Action News, which seldom offered much of either, burst from the TV set over the bar. Fiona lit a cigarette, and we both turned to watch the teaser.

"Is a serial killer stalking Rhode Island's children, hacking them to pieces, and feeding them to pigs? We'll be back in a moment with our exclusive investigative report. You'll be shocked!"

The exclusive investigative report turned out to be neither exclusive nor investigative. It consisted of a sound bite from Fiona's press conference, an angry "No comment" from Parisi, wild speculation by on-air reporter Logan Bedford, and a rea.s.surance from anchor-babe Amy Banderas that "the monster among us is a threat to every child in Rhode Island." Then she beamed at the camera and exclaimed, "Get ready for an unseasonably warm weekend! Next up, Storm Surge with the weather." Probably not the name his mama gave him.

This is what will pa.s.s for local news once the Dispatch's death rattle falls silent. I looked at my friend and shook my head sadly.

"Fiona," I said, "look what you did."

"Think I was wrong?"

"I think you should have listened to Parisi."

"If what I did saves just one kid..."

"It won't," I said.

"It's going to make parents more watchful."

"Not all of them, Fiona. Some of them are stupid. Some are on drugs. Some just don't give a s.h.i.+t. Besides, not even the best parents can stand guard over their kids every minute of the day. If the killer wants another kid, he'll s.n.a.t.c.h another kid. It's as easy as picking up a quart of milk at 7-Eleven."

Fiona didn't have anything to say to that. Her vanquished Bud joined its fallen comrades, and she ordered another.

"Got the autopsy report yet?" I asked.

"It's not final. Tedesco's waiting on the DNA."

"What's he saying about cause of death?"

"That unless we turn up more body parts, we'll never know. Of course, he's pretty much ruled out natural causes."

"Anything else?" I asked.

"Off the record?"

"Okay."

"I'm afraid there is."

"What?"

She just stared at me and shook her head.

"Rape?"

"Yeah," she said. "Violently and repeatedly."

We sat quietly for a while, she guzzling her Bud, I sipping my club soda and pretending not to notice that Attila the Nun had begun to cry.

On the TV, the sports guy was showing NBA highlights. Fiona locked her eyes on the screen as Paul Pierce drained a last-second three-pointer to ice a game for the Celtics. Then she clunked her Bud down on the tabletop, looked at me with wet eyes, and said: "I wonder what he's doing with their heads."

21.

In the days following Fiona's press conference, parents all over Rhode Island showed up late for work and skipped out early so they could ferry their children back and forth to school. Elementary and middle schools held a.s.semblies so Officer Friendly could repeat the customary warning to avoid strangers. Grandstanding local officials pledged stepped-up police patrols of schoolyards and playgrounds. The cops complied, knowing full well that it wouldn't do any good. The killer would hunt where the police weren't.

Four days after Fiona's press conference, on a clear and cold Tuesday morning, Angela Anselmo rapped on my apartment door and asked if I could drop Marta off at school.

"I hate to bother you with this," she said, "but the nursing supervisor yelled at me for being late yesterday, and I'm too afraid to let Marta walk to school alone."

"It's no bother," I said. "I'm happy to do it."

"Thank you. I really appreciate this."

"Need me to pick her up in the afternoon?"

"No. I'll be off by then, so I can do it."

"What about tomorrow?"

"I'm setting up a car pool with some of the other mothers in the neighborhood, so we should be okay."

"Good. But if you run into a problem, you can count on me."

"Thanks so much," she said. Then she turned and dashed down the stairs.

Fifteen minutes later I collected Marta from her apartment, led her to the Bronco, and asked her to buckle her seat belt for the short drive to Feinstein Elementary School on Sackett Street.

"I've been listening to you practice every night, Marta," I said.

"I hope it isn't disturbing you, Mr. Mulligan."

"It's not. I'm enjoying it. You play beautifully."

"Old Man Pelligrini doesn't think so. He bangs on our ceiling every night. Yesterday, he came to our door and yelled at Mama. Said he was going to call the police if I didn't stop making those awful screeching noises."

"He's just a grumpy old man. Don't let him get to you."

I pulled up in front of the school, let Marta out, and watched her skip up the walk. I didn't pull away until the door swung shut behind her.

That afternoon, just fifteen miles east of Providence, 492 kids spilled out of the red-brick elementary school in the little town of Dighton, Ma.s.sachusetts. Most of them scuttled onto waiting buses, but thirty-eight of them lived close enough to walk, Patrolman Robert Dutra told me later as we sat together in his squad car and sipped cups of takeout coffee. Parents wary of the alarming news from Rhode Island were waiting for most of the walkers, but sixteen of them, mostly third- and fourth-graders, were on their own.

Dutra watched six of the walkers cut across the school parking lot and turn left onto a sleepy country road. The other ten scampered down the long macadam driveway toward Somerset Avenue, the closest thing the little town had to a main road. The small-town cop had been on the job for a year-long enough to know what he should be doing but not long enough to be bored by his baby-sitting a.s.signment.

"A crossing guard was on duty at the corner of Somerset and Center," he told me. "I knew I could count on her to look after the kids." So he pulled his cruiser out onto the country road to keep an eye on things there.

Peter Mello, a nine-year-old fourth-grader, walked north on Somerset Avenue with three of his friends. The crossing guard helped Peter's friends cross Center Street and watched them scoot north. Then she stopped the light traffic on Somerset so Peter could cross it and head east on Center Street.

The crossing guard's name was s.h.i.+rley Amaral. She'd been doing this job for eight years, and she'd always taken her responsibilities seriously, but the news from nearby Rhode Island had made her extra-vigilant. Normally she would have headed home once the children pa.s.sed her post. This time, she remained on the corner so she could keep an eye on both Peter and his friends as they walked toward their houses. None of the kids lived more than a half mile from school.

About a hundred yards from the corner, Center Street drops steeply, beginning its decent to the Taunton River about a quarter mile away. Amaral watched Peter drop out of sight down the slope and then turned her attention back to the boy's friends. When she lost sight of Peter, he was sixty yards from his front door. He never got there.

"Think this has something to do with the child murders in Rhode Island?" Dutra asked me.

"I don't know."

"If you didn't think so," he said, "you wouldn't be here."

22.

The Red Sox traded Manny Ramirez away two seasons ago, but I wasn't going to be the one to break the news to my best friend. He was Rosie's favorite player, and the news would surely break her heart. I unfolded the autographed Sox jersey with Manny's number 24 on the back and draped it over the shoulders of her gravestone, just as I did every time I visited.

It was late in the year for the gra.s.s to be this green. I knelt in it and read the inscription on the headstone for what had to be the hundredth time: "Rosella Isabelle Morelli. First Woman Battalion Chief of the Providence Fire Department. Beloved Daughter. Faithful Friend. True Hero. February 12, 1968August 27, 2008."

Rosie had been racing to a house fire on a foggy night when her car crashed and burned. The fire had been deliberately set. I'd feed the arsonist to Cosmo's pigs while he was still breathing, if only I knew who he was. Rosie and I had been best friends since we were six years old. Over the years, dozens of other friends had come and gone. Work had gone from bad to good to bad again. Lovers had consumed and then abandoned us. Through it all, Rosie and I told each other everything. Some habits are hard to break.

"I'm carrying a gun now, Rosie. Got it right here under this loose jacket. I'd take it out to show you, but I know you never liked guns. Some very big guys warned me to keep my nose out of something, and, well, you know how I am. I hope I don't have to shoot anybody, but I might if they come back."

H. P. Lovecraft, the master of cla.s.sic horror fiction, was at rest nearby, hidden behind a thicket of azaleas. Not far off, Thomas Wilson Dorr was entombed, his failed rebellion no longer a threat to Rhode Island's ruling cla.s.s. Ruggerio "the Blind Pig" Bruccola was just behind a row of rhododendrons, buried with the last few secrets he'd managed to keep from the feds. My best friend was never at a loss for stimulating company.

"I'm tired, Rosie. Tired of watching the newspaper business collapse. Tired of the Maniellas and their dirty business. Tired of writing about dead and missing kids. Maybe I just need a little time off, but all I can manage right now is a night out. I've got tickets for Buddy Guy at the House of Blues in Boston tomorrow night. Same place we saw him jam three years ago. I'm taking this woman I know. You'd like her, Rosie. She's smart and funny and loves the blues. Drop-dead gorgeous, too. Only thing is, she doesn't seem to like me very much."

Off to the east, gulls swooped over the Seekonk River. Rosie and I sat silently for a while and listened to their rusty-hinge cries. This was Swan Point Cemetery, but I didn't see any swans. I wrapped my arms around the cold granite headstone and gave Rosie a hug. Then I stood, removed the jersey from her shoulders, folded it, and walked past a dozen graves to my car.

I turned the ignition, popped Buddy Guy into the CD player, and growled along with him: You d.a.m.n right, I've got the blues.

That evening, I flopped on my mattress with a book by a former Tampa Tribune reporter named Ace Atkins. Crime novels were his parachute out of the newspaper business. If only I had that kind of talent. Ace was one of my favorite writers, but I couldn't keep my mind from wandering. After reading the same paragraph four times, I gave it up, s.n.a.t.c.hed the remote, and tried channel surfing. A Law & Order rerun, Dog the Bounty Hunter, Rachael Ray cooking something I wouldn't eat on a dare, Keeping Up with the Kardas.h.i.+ans, Jim Cramer bellowing bad investment advice, a NOVA special on frogs, The Golden Girls (which seemed to be on twenty-four hours a day), a meaningless game between two bottom-dwelling NBA teams ... Finally I landed on a Charlie Rose interview with some economist I'd never heard of. Rose was the television equivalent of a bottle of Ambien and a whiskey chaser, but I was so restless that not even he could put me to sleep.

I spent ten minutes looking for my cell phone, found it in the pocket of my bomber jacket, and called Joseph DeLucca. Twenty minutes later, I was smoking a cigar in the doorway of Pazienza's gym when Joseph rolled up in a decade-old Mustang that was even money to beat my Bronco to the glue factory.

I held the heavy bag for him again as he gave it a good working over. When he was done, he helped me wrap my hands. I began with a flurry of jabs and then turned my hips and put everything I had into a left hook. I backed off to catch my breath and then attacked the bag again, jabbing, hooking, and looping overhand rights. Sweat streamed into my eyes. I could barely see, but I kept throwing punches. I hated that bag. I willed it alive so I could beat it to death. I drew a breath and pounded it some more.

"Mulligan!"

I threw a right cross and a left hook.

"Mulligan!"

Another hook.

"Mulligan!?" Joseph said. He grabbed me by the waist and dragged me away from the bag.

"What?"

"Look at your f.u.c.kin' hands."

Blood was seeping through the wraps.

Thirty minutes later, both of us freshly showered, we knocked on the door at Hopes. It was after hours and the lights were turned down. Annie, the barmaid, unlocked the door, let us in, and locked it behind us. A half-dozen copy editors were playing low-stakes poker at a table in back. A couple of off-duty cops sat at the bar, drinking from tall gla.s.ses of Guinness. Joseph and I grabbed a couple of cans of Bud from the cooler, slapped our money on the bar, and took our pick of the empty tables.

I smelled like Dial. Joseph smelled as if he'd bathed in Axe. I hated Axe. I pulled out a cigar, clipped the end, set fire to it, and glared in turn at each customer in the place, daring someone to tell me to put it out.

Joseph gulped from his can of Bud, set it back on the table, and said, "What the f.u.c.k's wrong with you?"

When I got home, I was still jumpy. I lay in bed drinking Bushmills from a pint bottle, hoping it would calm me down. I used the remote to snap on the TV and channel surfed until I stumbled on a favorite movie, The a.s.sa.s.sination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. As the whiskey kicked in, I fought to keep my eyes open, afraid of what my dreams might bring.

I knew I'd lost the fight when a b.l.o.o.d.y little girl walked into the room and asked me to help her find her arms.