The Penitent One (Boston Crime Thriller Book 3)

by Brian Shea

  Vance staggered back on the uneven icy ground. Between the blow and the bear trap, he fell, slamming his head into an exposed tree root. Not waiting a second for him to recover, Kelly pounced on top of the man.

  Vance's head bobbled loosely as Kelly rolled him over. The punch had rendered him unconscious, or close enough to it. He cuffed him, cinching the other cuff above the damaged arm ensnared by the trap, then did a rapid but thorough search of him, making sure he didn't have any other weapons.

  Satisfied, Kelly dragged him and sat him a few feet away from the pistol he had used to try to kill him.

  Keeping his gun on the killer, Kelly pulled his phone. “We got him.”

  “Wha—” Halstead started to say.

  “Send medics. Gray got snagged by a bear trap. Vance is injured too. Tell the guys to be careful. He’s got the surrounding woods rigged with traps.” He hung up before giving his boss a chance to respond. Kelly knew there would be time for that later.

  Kelly stared down the sight of his gun at the man who had killed his partner nearly nine years ago, the same man who had killed an undercover FBI agent and who had nearly killed his girlfriend and partner. A deep-rooted rage boiled inside him, and he fought to control it. He could pull the trigger now, end it, end this man who had caused so much misery.

  Kelly's finger toggled the Glock’s trigger, taking it to a fraction of an inch from the break point and holding it there. One micro squeeze, and the round would free itself from the chamber and end this man's life.

  But Kelly wasn't an executioner.

  With an exhale, he released his finger and indexed alongside the slide. He held steady as the sirens in the distance grew louder.

  28

  Halstead arrived on scene and took in the aftermath. Gray was already on his way to the hospital, and Christopher Vance was being stabilized and readied for transport. Two uniformed patrolmen accompanied him in the ambulance, and one followed behind. They were taking no chances with the killer, the trained assassin who had proven himself to be as dangerous and elusive as they came.

  Halstead stared blankly at Kelly, the cobalt blue of his eyes betraying none of his thoughts. And then he opened his mouth to speak.

  Kelly readied himself for whatever onslaught of expletives he had in store. He was prepared for the fallout. He deemed it worthy, whatever the cost. And then Halstead did something that surprised Kelly completely. He smiled and slapped him on the shoulder. Kelly shook himself, as if stuck in a dream.

  "Good job. It's a hell of a thing you did here today."

  Kelly continued shaking his head in disbelief.

  "Didn't expect that?" Halstead asked.

  "Didn't know you could smile."

  Halstead laughed. And then, as if flipping a switch, his face was deadpan again. "You believe all that stuff you hear? The Iceman? You of all people, Michael Kelly, should know better than to take anything at face value. Now, go get cleaned up and we'll meet back at the office for a debrief."

  "I'd like to stop by the hospital first. Need to check on a friend."

  Bobby McDonough had a bandage running across his face, covering most of it. The only thing visible was a corner of the left side of his face, including his eye. His hands and part of his midsection were also bandaged in white gauze. Monitors chirped and beeped in the backdrop. Kelly sat in the chair next to his lifelong friend, reached out, and gently grabbed his wrist.

  McDonough stirred, and his one visible eye blinked open. It watered as the light struck it.

  Kelly reached out and wiped his friend's cheek. "How you holding up, pal?"

  "Like I passed out drunk at a beach and woke up with a third-degree sunburn. How do you think I feel?" McDonough snarked.

  "Good to see you haven't lost your charming personality. No luck of that getting burned away, is it?" Kelly chuckled, giving his friend a dose of his own medicine.

  "Thanks," Bobby said quietly.

  "For what?"

  "Oh, you going to get all humble on me now, Saint Mike?" McDonough said. "Look, I already heard one of the cops talking. You pulled me out. I would have been dead back there in that house. You saved my life."

  "You act like that's such a bad thing," Kelly said.

  "It is, if you're going to hold it over my damn head for the rest of my life."

  "Nah," Kelly said, “I think we're even."

  He knew McDonough understood exactly what he was talking about. The life debt had been repaid with a life, the only way to truly pay those kinds of debts.

  "I don't know if they told you, but your boss is down the hallway," Kelly said, rolling his eyes slightly.

  "We're hard men to kill."

  "Guess so."

  "Then I guess you also heard we got him."

  McDonough nodded slightly and then winced at the pain of the movement. "I did hear that."

  "You know, a lot of this could have been avoided had you just told me who the hell he was. You know that, right?" Kelly leveled a serious stare at his friend's one visible eye.

  "I guess, although I didn't know his real name. We called him Gabriel, or that's what he told us to call him. Something about the archangel. Guy was a nutjob."

  That made sense, Kelly thought. Fit his whole motif. He was sure the psychiatrists at the FBI were going to have a field day interviewing him post-arrest to dissect him like a guinea pig.

  Serial killers of all kinds got a special place in the post-arrest arena. They were treated in an iconic fashion, separated from the general population and held in reverence by psychologists. And with everything Kelly had learned about Christopher Vance, AKA The Penitent One, he would no doubt fit the bill.

  "You may not have known who he was, but you could have pointed me in his direction, given me his contact information. Like how you reached out to him for a job. We could have set something up. We could have done this years ago." Kelly was referencing Danny Rourke's case, and McDonough knew it.

  McDonough coughed and then groaned in pain but didn’t respond.

  "Why Tomlin? Why Rourke?”

  “Those are two entirely different questions," McDonough said. "And everything I tell you here now is because of what you did for me in that fire. But none of it, and I mean none of it, will ever go on record, because I'll never speak about it again. And I know you won't name me as your source."

  Kelly knew he was right. "Then tell me."

  "Tomlin was business. We got word that they had put somebody in play to eavesdrop on Walsh. We heard it was an agent, so we hired outside to take care of the problem. Gabriel was our handyman, our cleaner, when a job needed doing that we couldn't do ourselves."

  "Then why did he come after you? Why did he come after Walsh?"

  "O'Toole."

  "O'Toole? What do you mean, O'Toole?"

  "He wanted double because he was doing a fed. Walsh agreed, but O'Toole shorted him."

  "I guess that wasn't a good idea," Kelly said.

  McDonough nodded and then looked down at an IV drip extending from the line in his wrist. "I guess you could say that. But what's done is done."

  "Okay. Why Rourke then?"

  Bobby turned slightly away from Kelly. Every movement, no matter how subtle, seemed to cause his friend pain, and it hurt Kelly to watch. But he wasn't leaving this room without an answer, and Bobby knew it.

  "You're not going to like what I have to say. Me holding this back from you was as much about protecting you and the memory of your friend and partner."

  "Tell me," Kelly said.

  "He was dirty, Mike."

  Kelly sat back. He felt sick. Danny Rourke, dirty?

  "I warned you it wasn’t going to be something you wanted to hear. But it’s the truth. He was on the take. He was in charge of making sure that certain businesses paid up. Problem was, what we paid him for his services wasn't good enough. He got greedy. Walsh didn't like it. Walsh doesn't like being stolen from. There's no coming back from it."

  Kelly heard his friend’s words, but they
didn't make sense. Didn't match what he knew about Danny Rourke. But the more he thought about it, the more he knew that McDonough wasn't lying. The truth sometimes tasted funny, like day-old pizza. Rourke’s memory soured in his mind.

  Kelly stood. There was nothing left to say. He needed time to process everything. He'd risked his life tonight, and so had Barnes and everyone else in their unit, to bring to justice a person who had killed a cop. And he had just found out the reason why and couldn't tell a soul.

  "I'll be seeing you, Bobby," Kelly said, turning and walking away.

  "I'll be kicking your ass in that ring in no time," McDonough offered as the door closed behind him.

  Kelly walked down the hallway toward the elevator.

  Up ahead, two doors down, he saw the strangest sight. Under different circumstances it would have registered as comical.

  On one side of a patient door was a uniformed Boston police officer. Sitting in a chair on the other side was one of Walsh's goons. Two polar opposites guarding the same man.

  Kelly walked by the room. The door was open enough to see in. The legendary mob boss was surrounded by several of his closest friends. The doctor was fighting an uphill battle and wasn’t faring well, evident as Walsh gave him the middle finger and then stuck a Tootsie Pop in his mouth.

  Kelly walked by without stopping.

  Kelly, exhausted, was sitting at his desk. Barnes and Mainelli had gone home two hours ago, and Gray was in the hospital recovering. His first visit tomorrow morning would be to the FBI agent.

  Kelly stared at the murder board. He had already taken down Tomlin’s card, switching it from red to blue. Same with O'Toole's. He stared at the last red one, the one that had topped his board since he came to Homicide.

  Kelly stared at the card for what seemed like an eternity, then reached out to remove it. The red card seemed as distant as if reaching for the sun. The un-closable case was now shut forever. The card felt foreign in his hand, its value disintegrated with McDonough’s words.

  He pulled it off the board, holding it between his fingers before transferring the information to a blue one. When he was finished, he grabbed his coat and made his way to the door.

  On the way, he tore Rourke’s red card in half and dropped it in a trashcan.

  Then Kelly walked out of the second-floor offices of Boston Homicide, leaving nearly a decade of emotional baggage behind him.

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  The story continues in Sign of the Maker, be sure to check out the following excerpt.

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  SIGN OF THE MAKER

  A BOSTON CRIME THRILLER NOVEL

  A serial bomber is on the loose in Boston.

  If Kelly wants any chance of stopping the attacks, he must join forces with the most unlikely of partners.

  Click here to purchase SIGN OF THE MAKER now

  Turn the page to read a sample —>

  SIGN OF THE MAKER: Chapter 1

  The morning walk through the park had been exhilarating for several reasons, most importantly being that the approaching end to weeks of tireless effort that would soon be over. He had time. Seven minutes to be precise. And if he was anything, he was precise.

  He'd calculated the moment of time he now took to sit on the green painted bench and watch the birds. His back was to Beacon Street where many of Boston’s wealthiest resided, looking down on the green of the Common. The exhaust from a passing bus momentarily tainted the park’s air until a gust of wind cleared it away.

  He settled pressed against the hardwood and watched the birds.

  Most people hated pigeons, seeing them as rats with wings. But he did not. He saw the subtle variances of gray in their wings to be just as dynamic and unique as a brightly colored toucan. To him, the birds were fearless. He respected their defiance in the way they held their ground against humans who scurried about it in the overpopulated city. They didn't cower and fly off like the more skittish and delicate birds. They stood their ground against the foot traffic of the humans sharing the park space with them. Sure, they'd shift and adjust themselves, maybe give a quick flight to move out of the way of a jogger or cyclist or speed walker. But they always returned.

  He felt a connection to the winged creatures, mostly for their ability to hide in plain sight. For the man on the bench was invisible too. He, like the pigeon, moved in and out among these people without even receiving a passing glance. The colors of his clothing were always muted in soft uninspired tones. He was neither good looking, nor ugly. An average person carried a unique quality of anonymity to it. On the outside he was nothing but a waif of a man. Shorter than most. Smaller than most. But his mind was anything but small.

  Early in his youth, he'd found that exposing the true nature of his genius caused others to look at him differently. His parents had been the first to notice and they’d been intimidated by it. As he grew, he learned even his enlightened professors were no match for his intelligence. In time, he’d become completely isolated from the outside world, left only with his thoughts and the birds he so adored.

  He watched as a larger pigeon shoved a smaller one out of the way and nibbled at a bit of coffee cake on the ground. In the animal world, size matters. The bigger, the more powerful you were, the more you could take. But intelligence was the ultimate equalizer. He wouldn’t interfere and help the smaller bird. Nobody had helped the man when he had needed it. Survival of the fittest.

  He watched the smaller bird carefully. His wing fluttered briefly, tapping the bigger pigeon on his tail feathers. As the bigger bird spun to see the source of his meal interruption, the smaller bird swooped in and snagged the bit of broken coffee cake and flew away. And, just like that, intelligence had trumped the larger bird’s position. The man smiled at the small victory.

  He spent the next several minutes in deep thought, contemplating what lay ahead for the next twenty-two minutes.

  His life had always been a series of calculations and equations. He crunched the numbers now one last time, running through the schematics in his mind. Everything had to be perfect. Precision was critical. Connecting all the dots in his head, he affirmed everything was as it should be. Satisfied, he got up from the bench as a group of pigeons parted the way.

  He made his way down through the park toward Tremont Street to his morning's destination.

  The coffee shop wasn't full, which meant a seat would be available. In the three weeks since he’d been coming here, he had on only two occasions been left without a seat. He was glad today that wouldn’t be the case.

  It was busier than it had been in recent weeks. Now that winter's thaw had given way to spring, more people in the heavily foot trafficked city were out and about.

  He walked to the counter, paid cash for a medium black coffee, and then walked toward a small table set along the wall. He grabbed a copy of the USA Today newspaper from the rack before taking his seat.

  He perused the he
adlines but didn't read. He'd already scoured the internet before leaving his small efficiency apartment on Boylston Street. He didn't read the national papers. His sources of information came from specialized access points far beyond the scope and investigative source abilities of even the biggest media conglomerates.

  The newsprint went up like a forcefield in front of him. He was invisible again, disappearing behind the gray rectangle of paper as he sipped the coffee.

  For a café that prided themselves on their ability to make drinks on the menu such as a half calf decaf with a twist of lemon, they had fallen short on their ability to make a simple cup of coffee.

  He sipped at it. Having consumed coffee in cafes around the world, he knew that the right blend of beans brewed to perfection required no sugar, no cream. What was in his cup was anything but that. Although the aroma of the café was wonderfully sweet, the coffee tasted burnt and weak. It was barely above room temp, and he liked his piping hot regardless of time of year. Disappointed, he sipped at it with disdain. With each sip, his mood soured further.

  Peering up from the paper, he scanned the small space of the cafe.

  A young mother in her early twenties was seated nearby with her son who looked about three years old. His dirty blond hair was a mangled sea of wild curls, and he was still in his pajamas. His mother had obviously not seen it important to dress her child before taking him out. She uncapped a chocolate milk and unsheathed a Nutri-grain bar, sliding it over to him while she enjoyed an iced latte with a blueberry scone.

  It was only a matter of seconds before half of the milk ended up on the boy's pajama shirt, soaking the image of the Dabasaurus Rex, whatever that might be. The mother didn't seem to notice that her son was now wearing the chocolate milk she’d just bought him. She was absorbed in whatever message she was reading on her phone. He wasn't close enough to see it, nor did he care enough to try.