The Penitent One (Boston Crime Thriller Book 3)

by Brian Shea

  He toweled his hair and put on a decent shirt, then grabbed his gear and headed down for his first cup of coffee. As he descended the staircase, his cell phone vibrated. Looking at the incoming number, Kelly recognized the three-digit prefix 538 registered for all BPD department-issued phones but not the last four numbers.

  Kelly answered it as he pressed the brew button on the coffee maker. The grinds had been set the night before and the water tank filled to the max line. The cold pot buzzed to life, hissing as the first droplets of black gold struck the empty bottom.

  "Kelly," he said. Speaking aloud caused his head to hurt.

  "Detective Kelly, this is Sergeant Halstead."

  "Morning, Sarge, you can just call me Mike."

  Silence for a moment on the other end. "Detective Kelly, I need you to meet me at the bike path near Storrow Drive under the Mass Ave bridge. You'll see the cruisers."

  “What do we got?"

  "I'll brief you when you get here."

  Kelly heard the chirp of a siren in the background, and the muffled voices of other men talking nearby. Son of a bitch, he's already on scene.

  He’d become accustomed to Sutherland’s way of doing business. His former sergeant, who was probably in a near coma after last night’s abuse, used to just take the incoming by phone. If Mike’s team was up on rotation, Sutherland would take the incoming call from a street supervisor, get the details, and then notify them. Rarely did he show up on scene unless requested, or it was a major one where he might be needed to run interference. Majority of the time he would review it from his office, keeping tabs on the case from the confines of the second floor.

  Things were apparently going to be very different under Halstead's command. Kelly had heard rumors he was a micromanager, often running his own parallel investigation to his subordinates. Looked like he was validating that early on. He had gone to the scene before notifying the team. And with it, Kelly's effort to beat his new boss to the office had failed before the day had even gotten started.

  “Be there in a few minutes.” Kelly didn't have time for his normal routine. With the coffee still brewing, he exchanged his travel mug with the pot, filling it before returning the pot to its rightful place. He threw in a couple scoops of sugar for balance and extra cream to coat his stomach.

  He was out the door less than a minute later.

  It was cold. The air had a rawness capable of penetrating the outer layer of flesh and deep into the bone. The sensation was worsened by the dampness that only a New Englander truly understood.

  Down by the Charles River, the wind skipped off the partially frozen edge of the waterway. The path around the river was a hot spot for joggers, and during warmer months crew teams from iconic schools such as Harvard and Boston College could be seen navigating its waterway. On mornings like this, the only people pounding the icy paving were the true die-hards. The woman who called in the body had told the patrolman she was out for an easy ten-miler when she found him. An easy ten-miler? Not under normal conditions. And definitely not this morning. Kelly was fit from his boxing and fleet of foot, but he had never been one for distance.

  All the layers Kelly had piled on did little to mitigate the air’s chilling bite. He shivered. The hangover was definitely adding an X-factor into the mix.

  Kelly walked up to Halstead, who was standing by with Ray Charles and Trent Dawes, AKA Freckles. Everybody was there except Mainelli. Barnes had pulled up just a split second before him and was exiting her car.

  She eyed him warily as the two met up, walking across the frozen tundra and down to their new supervisor.

  "I guess things are going to be a bit different under our new commander," Barnes offered.

  "Definitely looks that way."

  They crunched their way down and stood outside the closed scene marked off by yellow police tape. In the backdrop they saw the tarp covering the body.

  Halstead was expressionless as he looked at Kelly and Barnes. "Detective Mainelli said he'd be in soon, but I figured you'd want to get started as soon as possible," he delivered in robotic fashion.

  The Iceman seemed to be a fitting nickname. Even more so in their current surroundings.

  “You got a floater. He popped up this morning." Halstead thumbed in the direction of the body. "Early morning jogger saw. Patrol has her information. He washed ashore at some point.”

  "Isn’t this Troop H’s jurisdiction? The staties typically handle the waterway," Kelly said. Off in the distance, he saw the blue-gray shirt and blue pinstripes on the navy polyester pants distinguishing the Mass State Policemen from the city cops. The sloop garrison hats nearly touched as they clustered together. One of them wore the chevrons of a supervisor.

  "It looked like it was going to be theirs at first. That’s originally why I came. No need to come in force if it wasn’t going to be ours.”

  Maybe not as much of a micromanager as he thought. Halstead had come to determine whether the squad needed to be activated. He was prudent. Didn’t want to expend resources where they weren’t needed. Kelly sipped from his mug. The warmth of the coffee worked to thaw him somewhat.

  “So, it’s ours?” Barnes asked.

  “You’ll understand in a second." Halstead looked at Charles and Dawes.

  "Water recoveries mess a lot with the pathology,” Charles said. “But one thing’s for certain, this isn’t a boating accident. And the killing most likely happened off location."

  "Just how long were you guys out here before we got called?" Kelly allowed a little bit of his edginess to show, partly from the hangover and partly from annoyance that he was playing catch-up on what would undoubtedly be his case.

  "You'll see why." Charles gave a wry smile.

  Kelly didn't like the games being played and knew Charles well enough to recognize that this was not his doing. He would tease, yes, but this holding back of information and bleeding it out slowly was not his way.

  "Well, I guess we better get down there and see," he said, letting his annoyance rise to the surface.

  Halstead was unfazed. His cobalt blue eyes turned toward the body. "Follow me," he said, slipping under the police tape.

  Charles and Dawes shuffled alongside him while Kelly and Barnes trailed the small gaggle as they made their way down to the shoreline.

  As the tarp flapped in the breeze, Kelly caught a glimpse of the body face down on the icy bank. Depending on how long the man had been submerged, there would most likely be bloat. What Kelly could tell from his brief visual snapshot was the dead man, in life, had been heavyset.

  The patrolman standing watch over the body stepped aside and, at Halstead’s direction, unveiled him.

  The victim’s hair was gray, whiter because of the frost coating it. His skin was a strange translucent, zombie-like color. The gaping hole in the back of his skull was covered in ice.

  “Gunshot wound to the head. Exit appears to be to the rear of the skull,” Kelly said to himself. He edged around the body, stepping carefully, and looked at the dead man’s face, half buried in the snow. Even in the victim’s current physical state, Kelly recognized him instantly.

  He looked back at Barnes and then everybody else. "You know who this is?"

  Halstead was deadpan.

  "This is Turtle O'Toole," Kelly said, looking back down at the dead man. "Connor Walsh's number two man. This is his long-time running mate. These guys came up together. You're telling me somebody whacked the Turtle?" Kelly looked around at the people with him and the officers in the distance, half expecting to see Connor Walsh watching from the crowd.

  "I'm familiar with Mr. O'Toole," Halstead said. "But that's not the whole reason our squad's been brought in on this."

  Charles, again taking Halstead’s cue, walked around and adjusted O'Toole's left arm. The ice crunched as he lifted it at the elbow, exposing the bagged left hand. “Take a look.”

  A knot formed in Kelly’s stomach as he bent low.

  Shielding his eyes from an icy blast of wind,
he peered through the bag’s clear plastic coating.

  It took a second to see it. On O'Toole’s left hand was the clearly visible cross carved in the web of flesh between his thumb and index finger. Kelly shot a glance past Charles and met Halstead’s cobalt blues.

  "Looks like your Tomlin case just got reactivated."

  19

  They spent the morning in the icy cold while processing the body and ensuring no other evidence was left behind before clearing the scene. Kelly had spent the remainder of the day working hand in hand with Charles, going over what little evidence they had collected. The ME's office took a preliminary look at the body on scene but offered nothing in the way of anything useful. No window of time for the murder, and stated a TOD was unlikely even after the formal autopsy was conducted.

  Kelly doodled on his notepad while he waited. The phone was cradled against his ear as he scribbled a wavy line.

  “You still there?” Best asked.

  “Yup. Not going anywhere,” Kelly said.

  “Unlike our date,” Best chided.

  “Any amount of groveling going to get this to stop?”

  “Not likely. Working around the dead is a bit boring. Thinking of new ways to give you a hard time is one of my favorite pastimes.” Best laughed at her own joke.

  “Glad I can provide such amusement.” Kelly gave a moment’s pause before shifting the conversation back to the reason for the call. “What’s the definitive on the time of death?”

  “It’s anything but definitive. The window of time is adjusted for a multitude of variables, in this case the two most counterproductive being the temperature of the water and the water itself. Both retard the body’s typical postmortem changes.”

  “Give me the layperson’s explanation. I’m going to need to note this in my report.” Kelly cradled the phone between his neck and shoulder and flipped to a fresh page in his notepad.

  “The water temp was forty degrees with a slight variance over the last twenty-four hours. The shallow water was slightly colder, dipping just below thirty-two. After death, the body’s temperature begins to slowly adjust to the ambient air surrounding it. In this case we’re dealing with near freezing temperatures. Under optimal conditions, the human body lowers 1.5 degrees every hour. In pathology we use that to establish a baseline comparing the body’s internal temperature to the external. Cold water, like where O’Toole was found, would accelerate the cooling process and thus throw off the equation. His core temp was taken rectally while on scene and registered sixty-five degrees. I did a test of his liver when he arrived here. The liver gives the most accurate reading. It read sixty-one degrees. I did some timeline extrapolation and have settled with sixty-three degrees as O’Toole’s core temp at the time of the recovery.”

  Kelly tried to shorthand the information. If this was the layman’s explanation, he’d hate to see the official calculations.

  Best continued rattling off the information. “Applying the decreased body temp to the standard equation would make it appear the time of death to have occurred approximately twenty-four hours previously.”

  “So, the TOD is roughly twenty-four hours from the time the body was located?”

  “No. I wish it were that easy. Like I said, the cold and the water change the game by speeding up the cooling process and slowing the internal changes such as lividity and rigor.”

  “Okay. Are we looking at more or less time?”

  “Less. Lividity was clear and visible. Rigor mortis had extended to the arms and legs.”

  Kelly thought of the cracking sound when Charles had manipulated the dead man’s arm to show him the mark on the hand. Part of the snapping noise was a byproduct of the ice. The other contributing factor was the rigor.

  “That stage of rigor typically occurs between eight to twelve hours postmortem. Because of the submersion in the cold water, I’m sliding the number closer to the eight-hour mark.”

  Kelly scribbled the numbers.

  “Taking the variables into consideration, I’m giving you a wider window for the time of death than I normally would.”

  “And that is?”

  “Between six and twelve hours.”

  Kelly blew out a sigh.

  “I know it doesn’t give you much to go on. But it’s the best I can do under the circumstances. Narrowing it further would be purely conjecture. And I’ll leave that to you.”

  “Thanks, Ithaca.”

  “I’ll be in touch once the formal autopsy is scheduled. We’re flooded right now. Not sure when your guy will be up on the slab.”

  “Keep me posted. And thanks for breaking it down for me.”

  “Any time,” Best said coyly.

  Kelly ignored the innuendo and returned the phone to its cradle, then walked into The Depot and added the timeline notes to the whiteboard, marking the estimated time of death as occurring between 4:30 to 10:30 p.m. the night before the body was found.

  Kelly was tired. The late night followed by the early rise, and those first few hours in the cold while his brain recovered from the night before, had proven exhausting. It took until mid-day before the dull, throbbing ache of the hangover dissipated enough so he could clearly function and think. And the all-consuming thought that came to mind was he was facing another red card on the board. But what he couldn't wrap his mind around was the victim. Why O'Toole? Why had The Penitent One come back three months later to put two bullets into Walsh's number two man?

  He knew somebody who might have an answer to that question. He looked down at his watch. It was 6:00 p.m., and Bobby McDonough hadn't returned his phone call. Kelly was feeling sluggish, that end-of-the-day feeling when all of the effort, mental and otherwise, was put into a new case. With few leads, except for the cross on the hand, he was staring at nothing usable. Instead of cutting out early and getting a good night's rest, he decided the best thing for his brain and body was to head over to Pops'. He’d almost forgotten it was Thursday. Tradition won out, trumping fatigue.

  He was up to spar with Bobby tonight. Kelly held out hope, even though his friend-turned-mob-enforcer hadn't been around in a while. He thought it might be a good time for them to catch up. Maybe he'd show since Kelly had called. Or maybe he wouldn’t for the very same reason. McDonough was unpredictable at best. Kelly crossed his fingers as he shut down his computer and headed for the door.

  It didn't matter how tired Michael Kelly was. The moment he set foot in Pops' gym, the energy of the place, the buzz of the ring bells, the thwack and hammering of heavy bags, the smell of sweat and blood refilled his depleted tanks. The gym had its own life force. And on his worst times, his best times, and everything in between, it fed Kelly and gave him a boost when he needed it most. And right now, he temporarily put O’Toole’s body out of his mind, as well as the fact he was facing off for another round with The Penitent One. He suddenly felt refreshed.

  Leaving his mental baggage at the door, Kelly stepped in. Edmond Brown and Donny O'Brien were warming up. They waved and smiled at him as he made his way over.

  "It looks like your partner's not here," Brown said.

  "He's been hit-and-miss, with more of it being misses lately," Kelly said.

  "Well, you can jump in with one of us if you want," O'Brien offered.

  "No thanks. If he doesn't show, you guys do your match. I'll just work the bag for a while. Blow off a little steam."

  They knew not to ask unless Kelly offered, kind of an unspoken pact among the men. His cases and his work life had a tendency to take Kelly to dark places, and they knew the gym, his ring time, and his workouts carried him away from it. Pops’s gym lifted him above the darkness for those moments, and they learned long ago not to drag him down unless he opened the door to that conversation, which he rarely did.

  Kelly did want to talk to O'Brien and let him know he hadn’t stopped searching for Father Tomlin’s murderer. O’Brien had stopped asking after a month had passed without any progression. Since then, there’d been an uneasy awkwardne
ss between the two. Kelly felt he’d let his friend down by not catching the person responsible.

  Brown followed O’Brien as the two climbed into the ring. Kelly finished wrapping his hands. The wraps stabilized his wrists and added padding to his knuckles, essential in keeping his hands aligned when hitting the heavy bag. His wraps, no matter how he laid them out and dried them, immediately moistened as soon as he donned them. His years of sweat lived within the fibers. The familiar smell, repugnant to an outsider, carried an air of nostalgia. Like pancakes on Saturday morning, it brought him back to his youth, to his childhood. And it completely invigorated him.

  Kelly warmed up, facing the 180-pound bag they had affectionately named Bessie because of its size and black-and-white coloring.

  He dipped low, bobbing from side to side, warming up his hips. He twisted a little more each time, ducking a little deeper with each pass. Few knew true power came from the hips. The biggest man in the world couldn’t deliver the full effect of his mass if he didn't shift his hip and put his body behind the blow. Anybody who knew how to effectively use the torque created from the midline was devastating, regardless of size.

  It was second nature to Kelly, and his ability to put his body behind his devastating right hand had made him the reigning Golden Gloves champion in his youth. In a city chock full of fighters, Kelly had been crowned number one in the most competitive weight class. He was a lean middleweight. The weight class was the perfect balance of strength and speed, which also made it the most challenging competition.

  Kelly let the first few snaps of his gloves, the six-ounce coverings over his wraps, smack loudly against the heavy bag. It rocked slightly. Force and its opposite reaction. Newton’s Law of Motion in effect. Kelly hadn't begun to put the full force of his combinations together. He liked to ease into it. He used the ring timer chime to begin his three-minute onslaught.