The Penitent One (Boston Crime Thriller Book 3)

by Brian Shea

  “Ya know, Jimmy, us being here providing security really isn't about him. We're not doing it for Walsh or any of his cronies. We're doing it for the other victims on the list. The ones who deserve better, like Rourke and Tomlin. And if we’re lucky enough to grab the son of a bitch responsible by using a floating turd like Walsh as bait, then I’m all for it.”

  Mainelli nodded. Barnes was shocked he was actually listening. Most of the time the gruff Italian only waited to talk and rarely listened to the words that came out of anybody else’s mouth.

  “But still…you've got to admit," he said with a smile. "It'd be pretty damn great if Walsh got taken out by this guy and then we caught him right after the act."

  “It’d definitely be two birds with one big stone. And it would save us a ton of paperwork.”

  Mainelli’s smile edged up unevenly across his face, as if his left and right cheek were in an invisible tug of war. “Exactly.”

  Anybody who’d worked with Jimmy Mainelli for more than a minute knew how much the salty detective loathed paperwork. Barnes knew she’d found his sweet spot.

  Then the conversation faded back to an awkward silence.

  Barnes was comfortable working with him. Not that they were close or overly friendly. It was strictly a working partnership, and not an unpleasant one. She'd come to know and like the portly detective, although his professionalism was lacking at times, as was his hygiene. Both were tolerable and both made him an acceptable, not exceptional, partner to have on a case.

  What Mainelli lacked, Kelly made up for in spades. Among the three of them, a healthy investigative balance had been struck. But not lately.

  Barnes had noticed that ever since she and Kelly had begun a dating relationship, or at least once Mainelli had picked up on it, his idle chitchat with her had dropped off. It was worse when they were alone. He’d become much more guarded and awkward.

  She figured talking about it would be equally as awkward. Probably more so. Barnes had no intention of spending any portion of this eight-hour security detail discussing the ins and outs of her relationship with Michael Kelly and the effect it was having on Mainelli.

  Barnes braced herself as Mainelli adjusted himself in his seat. It was his telltale sign he was about to pontificate. Again. She crossed her fingers and hoped that it wasn't on why they should be paid more, or how the cruisers needed to be updated. Those were his two go-to topics in times of strained silences.

  "It's Gabriella," Mainelli said softly, looking down toward the steering column and not making eye contact with Barnes. He was intentionally avoiding looking at her.

  Barnes leaned in, dipping her head in an effort to meet his eyes. "Is she okay, Jimmy? Is she sick?"

  Mainelli went quiet for a moment. "No. She's leaving me." His voice was barely a whisper.

  "What?" She knew he and his wife had a tumultuous relationship. She figured he was trying to live up to some stereotypical Italian way. The loud arguments he’d have over the phone at his work cubicle seemed more for show. And to Barnes, they’d been comical. All of their flareups appeared superficial and she never thought much of it. With three kids running amuck, who wouldn't have a bit of stress? But was the marriage the disintegrating kind?

  What happened? was the first question that popped into Barnes's head. But she was a cautious speaker and knew better than to lead with that. She decided to just wait out Mainelli, and in time, he'd fill in whatever gaps he was comfortable with.

  "That's why I've been a little bit late and looking like I slept in my car these past couple of weeks."

  Barnes wanted to tell him he always looked that way but opted for a softer approach. “How long has this been going on?"

  "I found out she was cheating on me with another guy. Get this. It was her personal trainer. The one I set up for her on her birthday.” Mainelli looked down at his midriff and gripped his girth with two hands, shaking his belly fat. "Guess I never had a chance. I knew I should've got a crockpot instead."

  "What are your plans? Can't keep sleeping in your car." That was Barnes's way—stick to the practical, steer away from the emotional. She didn't need to deal with the unloading of that closet full of problems. She was no shrink. God knows she had enough things to deal with without adding Mainelli to the list. No, Barnes knew herself well enough to know she was much better at planning and strategizing than offering personal advice. And if someone was facing a divorce, what better time to do a little bit of life planning? They had plenty of hours to kill. She figured she'd give it a shot.

  "She said she was going to go live with a sister in Revere, but I don't know. It's just, it happened so fast. It really is a lot to figure out. Just worried about my kids. I guess I could have done more."

  Mainelli's voice was soft, softer than Barnes had ever heard him speak, and she found herself struggling to make out his mumbled words. It appeared, asked for or not, Mainelli was preparing to unload his emotional burden on her. Barnes sought to sidestep this, racking her mind for a change of topic. And the answer to her prayers arrived in the form of a florist truck.

  It pulled to a stop in front of Walsh's home. The side was embossed in bright red and gold lettering that read Amelia’s Flowers. Tulip petals surrounded the words.

  Walsh had a six-man, handpicked security team. Two covered the front door, while the remaining four were staggered at various points within the home. Walsh’s men. Walsh’s rules. The two men outside did not display any firepower, but Barnes knew they were armed. The larger one’s shirt bulged under his left armpit from the gun shoulder holstered underneath. She had watched him slip his right hand inside his coat to fondle the butt of it every few minutes since they’d arrived four hours ago.

  The two guards approached the van, disappearing from view behind its high sides.

  “Should we move?” Mainelli asked.

  “Give it a second. If this really is a florist and our guy is watching, then we’ll blow our position.”

  “It’s not like we’re invisible in the Caprice,” Mainelli said, apparently back to his normal doom-and-gloom meanderings.

  The driver of the van got out and walked around to the back. He wore a white jacket with a matching white baseball cap pulled down tight over his head. Barnes raised her binoculars to get a better look. It was a little past 4:00 p.m., but the weak winter sunlight had already begun to shift to night. All she could make out before the deliveryman turned away from view and opened the double rear doors was the pair of silver wire-rimmed glasses he wore.

  He bent forward, the white jacket disappearing as he leaned into the back of the van and reappeared a second later holding a rectangular glass vase of green roses.

  The deliveryman closed the door, and Barnes caught a glimpse of the smaller of Walsh’s external security team. The florist nodded and approached. Both men then disappeared from view again.

  The seconds ticked by like minutes. Barnes’s eyes watered, but she refused to blink as she stared through the binocular’s amplified lenses.

  Green roses? Something familiar fluttered on the outer edge of her mind, just out of reach. There was a connection. Then it hit her like a wave. Shit! Green roses…Walsh’s calling card he left on his dead enemies.

  “Move!” Barnes unholstered her duty weapon as she stepped out of the car.

  Mainelli squinted toward the van and then back at Barnes.

  “It’s him!” Her voice was forceful enough to convey the message without being so loud as to alert the perp of their impending approach.

  The deliveryman came into view again, still cradling the vase in his left arm. He was holding something in his right hand, but Barnes was too far away to make it out.

  The man stood calmly in front of the main entrance to Walsh’s home. Neither of the two security team members were in sight. It dawned on her what he was doing at the door and what he held in his right hand. The keys.

  A second later, the man disappeared inside.

  Mainelli’s eyes were wide as he scramb
led for the unmarked’s radio. The message he relayed to dispatch was a frantic, “Code 99. Mainelli and Barnes need assistance at our location. Dorchester and Harvest. Suspect on scene. I repeat, Code 99!” Mainelli’s voice was uncharacteristically pitchy.

  Anybody on the receiving end of that transmission would be racing their way. A Code 99 was BPD’s critical incident designator.

  Barnes heard sirens in the distance as she sprinted across the intersection in a beeline for the door. Mainelli did his best to keep up.

  She rounded the back of the van and saw the two mobsters. Their bodies lay side by side on the sidewalk near the curb, each with a single gunshot wound in the forehead. A green rose lay on each of their chests.

  They were in a dead sprint for the door, weapons at the ready. Barnes grabbed her radio as she moved to the door. “We’ve got two down by a florist van in front. DRT. Hold medics. Send tactical. Active shooter. We’re going in!” Her voice was steady. She slipped the radio back into its holster and prepared to make entry.

  The shift had been made in law enforcement many years back with regards to nationwide protocols when it came to active killing events. Whenever police encountered such a threat, regardless of the number of officers on hand, there was no waiting around for backup. There was no waiting for a tactical deployment of SWAT when active killing was taking place. The only option, and one officers were indoctrinated to do, was the completely counterintuitive decision to head toward the sound of gunfire.

  Barnes pressed herself against the door and checked the handle. Still open.

  “Let’s do this,” Mainelli said.

  Barnes yanked open the door and they pushed inside, their Glocks leading the way. The first floor was huge. Not much had changed from her memory of it in the photo spread from the Herald. It was quiet. Too quiet.

  The stairwell was redesigned from the original triple decker, but it was still near the foyer entrance. Barnes paused at the bottom of the stairs and listened.

  Mainelli cursed under his breath. Walsh's private suite, a massive bedroom and living space with a full-length bar, was on the third floor.

  Barnes was preparing to clear the first floor when she heard three loud gunshots from upstairs.

  No time to waste, Barnes sprinted up, taking two steps at a time. Mainelli did his best, but was already one floor behind her, spitting and huffing as he went. She couldn't wait for him, could only hope he would catch up. She worried he'd have a heart attack before reaching the third floor.

  Seconds later, her shoulders were pressed against the outer wall, near the access door to the hallway leading to Walsh’s suite. She turned the handle and it opened. Barnes pressed her weapon forward, jamming her left hand into the door and pressing it wide. She stepped in. A soft, intricately woven rug runner led the ten feet to the door. The rectangular enclosure was bright white, with a black orb surveillance camera set at eye level on the right-hand side of the door. Beneath it lay a dead man. He had multiple gunshot wounds, several in the chest area and one in the skull that was slightly off-center above the right eye. He had a revolver in his hand. Barnes looked behind her and saw three shots in the wall near the door. At least he got a couple off before going down. Maybe he got lucky and the killer is bleeding out on the other side of the door? Wishful thinking, she knew.

  Walsh had bragged to the Herald that nobody could get to him in his penthouse, not even the cops. It looked like that theory had just been proven false.

  Barnes paused for a moment, tensing and relaxing her muscles. Adrenaline pumped through her veins. She could feel the thump of her heartbeat.

  She willed herself forward, staying low until she reached the crumpled heap of the bodyguard. She ran her hands along his body.

  Mainelli came up from behind, wheezing and grabbing his side. "Personal trainer. I should’ve been the one who got the trainer." He shook his head, hands on his knees, department-issue Glock pressed between his meaty hand and thigh. He looked at Barnes. “I don’t think you need to check him for a pulse.”

  Barnes found what she was looking for. She held up the fob access card. “We’re gonna need this to get in.”

  “Are you ready for this?” Barnes stood, extending the retractable lanyard attaching the access card to the dead bodyguard’s hip. It was just long enough to reach the panel without having to move the body.

  Looking nervous, Mainelli glanced down at the dead man at their feet. Sweat emptied from his pores, activated by his momentary exertion up the stairs. “Do I want to rush in and get killed protecting a mob boss? Not particularly. But there ain’t no way I’m letting you go in alone.”

  "Thanks," Barnes muttered, not realizing Mainelli was even considering that as an option.

  She held up the fob to the access panel. The red light changed to green and she heard a mechanical pop just as a hail of gunfire rang out from within.

  25

  Kelly pumped the soap from the dispenser, vigorously rubbing his hands together to create a thick, foamy lather under the warm water. It was the third time he'd washed his face, but he couldn't seem to get the acrid smell of the burnt house out of his nostrils. At least it wasn't the smell of death, but this wasn't much better. The smell of latex overwhelmed the soap’s fragrance, the long hours of wearing the form-fitting gloves melding their clinical scent into his skin.

  He dried himself with paper towels and left the bathroom. Gray was in The Depot going through the crime scene photos given to them by Charles. The assorted images were spread unevenly across the table. Gray was systematically and meticulously going through the crime scene again, the second time since they'd returned from the house.

  Kelly walked into the room, feeling slightly refreshed from his sink shower. "Any luck?"

  Gray barely looked up from the photo he was staring at. "Not anything since the last time you asked."

  Between nearly dying in a fire earlier in the day, and then spending the next several hours working the scene and processing what was left in the way of usable evidence, both men were physically and mentally taxed. The emotional wear and tear left them depleted. And seeing his best friend hauled off on a stretcher added an invisible weight to Kelly's shoulders.

  He focused his energy on the here and now, deciding the best thing he could do for Bobby would be to find the person responsible. Kelly stepped away from the conference room and went over to his desk. He picked up the phone and dialed the extension for Raymond Charles, who picked up on the third ring.

  "Did you hear back from the lab?" Kelly asked.

  Charles exhaled. It was more of a wheeze, the rasp of his throat attributed to his lifetime of smoking.

  "I called in every favor I had over at the state lab. The fastest turnaround they can do on those DNA swabs that we took from the shackles—and I'm talking the absolute fastest, meaning everything else in the state lab gets dropped and everybody works hand in hand—was a couple days at best. They said sixty hours is the fastest they could turn it around, and that’s under the most optimal of conditions. More likely even with the rush, it'll be three days to a week before we get any definitive answer on whether we even attained any DNA from our potential doer."

  Kelly sighed. When Gray had seen the shackles, Kelly first thought they were used as some type of torture device. And in all respects, they were. But not for random victims. No, those shackles, Gray theorized after a brief call with the Behavior Analysis Unit down in Quantico, were most likely used for self-inflicted abuse. The conjecture being that The Penitent One had masochistic tendencies, probably stemming from his childhood. A reliving of past trauma. The shackles and kneeler were for his own private penance.

  Charles had swabbed several of the deep grooves in the metal, hoping that even if the TPO attempted to remove his DNA, there might be enough trace left for them to get a hit. Kelly still held out hope that was a possibility but was disheartened by the fact that even with pressure and favors called in, it would still take nearly a week to get the results. They didn't hav
e a week, especially now that their killer knew they were coming for him. The window of time before The Penitent One dropped off the radar altogether was closing, and Kelly could feel it.

  It had been Gray's fear all along. He had said during the initial workup done by BAU that if this guy felt the pressure, he would drop off the grid, and any chance of finding him again would be nearly zero. Kelly couldn't let that happen. Looking back into the conference room, he could see from the lines of frustration squiggled across Gray’s brow that his federal counterpart felt the exact same way.

  "All right, Ray. Well, thanks for trying. And let me know if you find anything else."

  Kelly walked back into The Depot. "Bad news," he said.

  "Great, can't wait to hear it." Gray set down the photograph he was looking at.

  “Charles said there's a rush put on the DNA swabs he took, but the likelihood of getting a response anytime soon is going to be hard to come by. Best-case scenario, we're looking at close to three days. With the worst being much longer."

  "Well, not to add insult to injury," Gray said, "but I've run the name that the house was purchased under, a Clint Vesper. Everything I can find matches the info from the mortgage company. I crosschecked it using Accurint. Clint Vesper bought that house five years ago.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “I can’t find a Clint Vesper anywhere in the system. Not that I thought it would be that easy. It was a longshot that a killer who had been able to cover his tracks for the last fifteen years would use his real name to make a purchase. A guy who’s rigged his house to blow up is not likely to make such a mistake. But still, I was hoping it would give us something to go on, maybe a dead relative or friend. But as far as I can tell, Clint Vesper doesn't exist."