Dead Heat

by Linda Barnes

  “She’s not dead yet—” Sharon began.

  “Menlo’s been in it all along, hasn’t he?” Spraggue said.

  Eichenhorn, on the couch, turned to stone.

  “It all fits. Menlo is in charge of arson liaison. Menlo is a rotten cop. Menlo flourishes on the force, keeps getting promoted while other, better cops, get fired. He must have found out about your little arson fortune a long time ago, Senator. He must have been bleeding you for years. Menlo must have told you about a young eager-beaver cop who was getting too damn close to your secrets.”

  Spraggue looked at Donagher for confirmation, got nothing but a blank stare.

  “Then Collatos got laid off and Menlo breathed a sigh of relief. But you didn’t, did you, Senator? You had to know how much this Collatos character had guessed or discovered. Once Menlo told you Pete had pulled those old files, he was as good as dead. Menlo knew Pete well enough by then to know he’d keep on looking and, eventually, he might have found out the source of your early wealth. Pete was like a dog on a scent once he got started. A good cop. Not like some who’ll follow any stink that leads to money, who’ve forgotten the aroma of justice if they ever smelled it.”

  “Want me to shut him up?” the short cop asked.

  “So you set it up with Menlo to hire Collatos as your personal bodyguard. I’ve always hated your guts,” Spraggue said to Menlo, “But I’m not sure you knew Donagher intended to kill him.”

  “I didn’t,” Donagher said harshly. “Not then.”

  “Or did you plan Pete’s execution together? No, I doubt the senator would trust his brainwork to a cop. The senator had the medicine, thanks to his wife’s previous illness … He had the mob connections from his earlier arson scam. I wonder what the senator’s record is on organized crime legislation?

  “Didn’t your wife suspect anything when all the property she owned under her old name, her father’s name, burned so advantageously? Or did she trust you to handle all her business affairs?”

  Eichenhorn picked that moment to stand and announce, “I’m going to call an ambulance.”

  “Sit down,” Donagher said. “That one won’t be any trouble. I know enough about him to guarantee silence.”

  “But Spraggue,” Menlo said, “is another story altogether. And the woman.”

  “Any other cop would have been too smart to type one of those envelopes on his own typewriter,” Spraggue said. The words brought purple into Menlo’s face, made his foot tap the wooden floorboards. “Did Pete know for sure when he visited you that Sunday, or did he just come to ask you why you’d lifted the envelope? Was he surprised when he typed a line on your typewriter and found it matched the type on the threatening envelope?”

  Menlo took his gun out of his holster. Not the police standard six-shot S&W—a .357 magnum.

  “No,” Donagher said hastily. “We have to think this out. We have to set the stage. I heard a burglar; I called the police. After all the threats, after Pete’s death, naturally I’d be uneasy. I call you and you see them running from the house. You call out, he turns. You see a gun. You shoot. The girl’s in the line of fire. How’s that? We can plant the guns later.”

  Eichenhorn shook his head. “I can’t—” he said.

  “You damn well can. Or there’ll be three deaths.”

  Spraggue said, “There’ll be three deaths anyway. Isn’t it going to strain the public credulity to imagine that you had burglars in the house the same night your wife committed suicide?”

  “It would sure as hell strain my goddam credulity,” Hurley said. He had his gun drawn as he came out of the shadows of the hallway. The walkie-talkie at his waist crackled. Sirens wailed and blue flashing lights split the night.

  Donagher broke for the front door, was outside in a flash.

  Hurley yelled into the walkie-talkie.

  “There’s nowhere far enough for him to run,” Spraggue said.

  Sharon dashed for the stairs.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  The ambulance came and went—khaki-clad paramedics eased Sharon to one side, took over Lila Donagher’s arrhythmic breathing, shifted her onto a stretcher, vanished with their burden so rapidly they seemed like creatures from a disjointed dream. Police cars came and went. Heavy black shoes beat a path up the walk of number 55 Sparhawk Street.

  Whispered conferences were held in corners. The governor, red-faced and irritable, abruptly wakened and hauled over to Donagher’s in the official limo, was closeted with aides in the kitchen. Someone tipped the press and what had seemed like madness moments before seemed now like a model of organized sanity as the newshounds joined the fray.

  When he wasn’t wanted for questioning, Spraggue sat in the senator’s armchair, elbows on knees, head bent forward. He laced his fingers together at the back of his neck and closed his eyes, imagined himself elsewhere, on a different stage.

  He saw Senator Donagher, running out into blackness, endlessly falling, opened his eyes and focused on the rug.

  Hurley prodded his shoulder.

  “Tell it once more,” he said. “For the superintendent.”

  “Shit,” Spraggue said. “Can’t you get a tape recorder?”

  Hurley waved a microphone in front of his eyes. “Straight from headquarters. This time for posterity.”

  Spraggue closed his eyes, composed his thoughts. He spoke with no inflection. “Some of this is guesswork. Some of it is fact. You’ll have to sort it out.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Spraggue was aware of a shifting of furniture, of additional faceless people entering the room. He waited for silence, began.

  “When Donagher decided to go into politics, he didn’t have the money to get into it in a big way. I think he ran for state auditor or something and lost. It must have cost him a lot to lose. In cash, in self-respect. His wife had some money, but more than that, she had property. Buildings in Roxbury, the North End, in Back Bay, Jamaica Plain, God knows where else. Maybe Donagher tried to sell them. Maybe that was when the mob approached him. Maybe he went to them because he couldn’t get a good price. But, no matter who initiated it, he became part of a scam to increase the value of his wife’s holdings, increase their value on paper, and then bum the buildings and collect the insurance. His name never appeared in any transactions. Buildings passed between straw owners connected with the mob and L. Di Bennedetto. Every time a building was sold, its property value increased. No money changed hands.”

  “Do you know the exact location of any of these buildings?” Spraggue didn’t recognize the questioning voice, didn’t look up.

  “One of them is 312 Commonwealth Avenue. The scam is still going on.”

  “How did Collatos get involved in all this?” Hurley asked.

  “Doing his job. He was working for Captain Menlo, assigned to liaison work with the Arson Squad. Maybe he couldn’t figure why so little progress was being made. He was a maverick sort of guy. A little slow on the uptake, but once he got ahold of an idea, he kept at it. He probably saw Menlo’s little cache of secret files, either stole them or copied them, took them home to work on. Maybe he put them aside to deal with later. He didn’t know he had hold of one end of a live stick of dynamite.”

  “But Menlo did,” Hurley added.

  “Yes. And he told the senator. And the senator ordered him to get the files back, to find out what Collatos was after. But then Collatos got laid off.”

  “And Donagher couldn’t leave it alone.”

  “He may have been obsessed with the upcoming election, with the idea that someone was going to tell his opponent, that Collatos was actually working for Bartolo. Donagher was uneasy. He wanted to get next to Collatos.”

  “Go on,” Hurley urged softly.

  “Donagher dreamed up the anonymous letter campaign. Menlo helped him out. Donagher probably did the letters himself. Those letters always bothered me. They were so damned meticulous, so obsessive.… Of course, Donagher would be careful, snip out words from the paper rather than print th
em. He couldn’t afford to be linked to those letters. And he’d naturally spend more time on the makeup of the letters than the contents. He didn’t care what they said, as long as they could be used as a reason to hire Collatos. He had Menlo do the mailing. And then Donagher called the police department for protection, and Menlo made sure that Collatos was touted for the job.”

  “Once he met Collatos, Donagher must have realized he’d made a mistake.”

  “I’ll say. Pete made friends with Donagher’s wife, started asking her innocent questions about her upbringing that must have made Donagher shiver. Donagher was having a hell of a time. Election coming up. His wife thinking of leaving—”

  “Stay with what happened next.”

  “What I think happened. Donagher decided he’d have to get rid of Collatos. He wanted to do it in a way that would not only leave him unsuspected, but would actually help his reelection. The marathon was obvious. Donagher wasn’t going to make any great time, wasn’t going to be the contender he’d been when he was young. But if somebody made an attempt on his life at the marathon, that would be news. And he fixed it so that, if the political assassination attempt idea wasn’t accepted, Lila would come under suspicion. She was the one who was supposed to give him water at the top of Heartbreak Hill. Even if someone did figure out that the act wasn’t political, but personal—an attack on Donagher the man, not Donagher the senator—our boy must have felt he could keep the wraps on under the guise of protecting his beloved wife. Maybe he even threatened to say she arranged the whole thing, tried to murder him. Maybe that was supposed to keep her in line until after the election. We were never supposed to get Pete as the target.”

  “And you think Pete already had that Parnate stuff in him?”

  “I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to prove that Pete was given Parnate. If Donagher’s campaign manager hadn’t made a misguided attempt to shield the Donagher family, I’d never have even heard of it. Question Eichenhorn. He must have had a powerful reason for getting it out of Donagher’s house. Maybe it suddenly appeared in Mrs. Donagher’s medicine cabinet. Maybe he saw Donagher trying to stash it someplace. Maybe the senator clammed up when Eichenhorn asked him about it. But it’s the only way Pete’s death makes sense.”

  “How does it work?” Hurley prompted softly.

  Spraggue shut out everything but the memory of typed words on paper. The tape recorder hummed insistently. It was the only sound in the room. “Let me see what I can remember. The drug doesn’t take effect immediately. Donagher probably started feeding Collatos doses of it a week, maybe two weeks before the race. Collatos, when I met him running around the reservoir, back when it all started, told me that Donagher had both of them on some kind of crazy diet to prep for the race. That diet would have been crucial to Donagher’s plan, because Parnate reacts with so many things. Donagher had to keep Pete under his nose all the time, regulate his behavior. That was easy; Pete hardly left his side. Pete probably got Parnate ground up in his spaghetti sauce the night before the race. He probably got a hit in his coffee just before the marathon began.”

  “Then you’re saying that the sniping at the reservoir was staged?” Hurley said.

  “What better way to make the public believe in a later attempt on Donagher’s life?”

  “But how could Donagher count on his wife not showing up, not being there at Heartbreak Hill to give him water?” The question floated over from across the room.

  “I hope you’ll be able to find that out for yourself, by asking her. The story she gave me was that she and her husband had a fight before the race. Donagher waited until the morning of the race to tell her he wanted her at Heartbreak. He issued an order instead of asking her. He pushed all the right buttons, knowing that he’d provoke a certain reaction. You don’t live with a person for all those years without learning how to manipulate that person. And Donagher was a master manipulator.”

  “Then Donagher got in touch with JoJo?”

  “I doubt Donagher had to get involved in the nitty-gritty. He called on the people who’d helped him before, when he needed money to get into politics. They provided a sniper for the reservoir scene, a flunky to hand over the tainted water—” Spraggue lifted a hand to his forehead, pushed forefingers and thumb against his temples. “God, yes, pick up a guy named Arnold Gravier; he’s in this thing up to his neck. He burned my house down trying to get rid of Pete’s files—and me.”

  “We’ve been looking for him—”

  “The mob picked JoJo for his acting ability, and his expendability. He may have been on a hit list already. Once JoJo was dead, all direct connections to the senator were severed—”

  “Of course, a lot of the deal required us not to identify JoJo as the killer—”

  “Right. Because JoJo was arson connected, mob connected. He made us wonder if the target might have been Pete all along. But then Menlo stepped into the investigation and shut the door. Even you,” Spraggue paused and focused his eyes on Hurley. “You had a dead man; you had a killer. You weren’t planning to scratch around for the story behind the facts.”

  “I got here,” Hurley said flatly. “I’ve been tailing Menlo since you called. That’s what I call cooperation. Tailing another cop sucks. How did you get onto Menlo?”

  Spraggue said, “The minute I got involved with Pete, Menlo was all over me. He even gave me his card so that I could call him if I heard anything else from Donagher’s direction. Earlier today, I saw the same phone number Menlo had so kindly shoved in my face on a note Pete Collatos had left for his boss, pinned to the bulletin board at Bill Rodgers Running Center. Either Donagher never got it, or he never took it down. It said that Pete had left Brian on his own that Sunday for a brief spell while he went to call on Menlo. And I knew that Pete had discovered something that day—he called me and told me so. He sounded drunk—or sick.” Spraggue raised his hand abruptly to his forehead, realized as he did so that the gesture was pure Pete Collatos. His hand shook. “Dammit.” he said. “Find somebody who was at that party! Find out if Pete went off his diet, had a glass or two of red wine with his spaghetti. If he’d been dosed with Parnate, that would explain his sounding so wrecked on the phone.… Maybe one of Donagher’s guests could testify to Pete’s reactions to the food and drink. Then a doctor could verify that those reactions were consistent with Parnate—”

  “That’s not much to give a jury—”

  “It may be all you have if Donagher doesn’t break down and confess.”

  Hurley said, “Why didn’t Pete tell you what he’d found?”

  “Someone came into the room. Donagher, probably. And Pete didn’t realize the significance of what he’d stumbled across. Maybe he thought he’d grabbed onto some stupid police-department con: cops write anonymous letters to politicians so that the terrified politicians will hire laid off cops for bodyguards. Revenge for all the tax cuts that hurt the department. Lord knows what Collatos must have thought when he realized one of the anonymous notes was typed on Menlo’s machine. But he wouldn’t have wanted to tell Donagher about it. Not yet. Collatos would have wanted more evidence before he accused a cop—even a bum like Menlo.” Spraggue’s recitation ground to a halt. His throat hurt.

  “Any more questions?”

  In the ensuing silence, Hurley pushed a lot of buttons, detached the microphone from the tape recorder.

  “I have one,” Spraggue said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Have you found Donagher?”

  “MDC unit called in half an hour ago. Saw a guy standing by the Charles River, near Soldiers Field Road. Just staring at the water. Thought they had a drunk or a potential floater, so they took him in. Collapsed in the prowl car. It’s Donagher. Took some kind of drug. They’ve got him over at Mass General. No word, yet. But to my mind it’s as good a confession as we’ll ever get.”

  “Don’t bank on it,” someone said. “If he recovers, his lawyer’ll tell us he was distraught over his wife’s attempted suicide.”

&
nbsp; “She still among the living?”

  “They think she’ll make it.”

  “Another question,” Spraggue said. “Two. Can I leave now? And where’s Sharon Collatos?”

  Hurley put a clumsy hand on Spraggue’s shoulder, scanned the room looking for objections, found none. “She’s waiting in the hall. Go home. I’ll be in touch.”

  Sure, Spraggue thought, go home.

  Sharon was asleep on a spindly bench in Lila Donagher’s colonial foyer.

  “Morning,” he whispered close enough to her ear to smell the scent of her perfume.

  “Mmmmmphf,” she said.

  “Time to go home,”

  She sat bolt upright, blinked.

  “Thanks for waiting,” he said.

  “I called your aunt. Ed Heineman went to St. Elizabeth’s to check on Mrs. Donagher. Your aunt says—”

  “I know. Come home.”

  “Right.”

  Spraggue leaned down and kissed her, hard, on the lips. “Thank you,” he said.

  “What for?”

  “For saving a life, two lives, three—”

  “Whoa. I would be honored to accept partial credit for Lila Donagher, but—”

  “If you hadn’t stopped me upstairs, I could have killed Donagher—and if I had—”

  “You’d have stopped on your own.”

  “Maybe.” He smiled crookedly. “I’m glad you came along.”

  “So am I.”

  Spraggue sat on the bench next to her, took her hand. “How are you holding up?”

  “I don’t know.… I feel so empty. Like none of this ever happened. Like the past two weeks have been one horrible endless day.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel. Revenge is supposed to be sweet, but—Donagher—I liked him; Pete liked him. He was just a guy who messed up.… And Pete’s dead.”

  “Want to get out of here?”

  She nodded silently.

  The street was almost back to normal. The police cars had ceased flashing their lights; the neighbors had retreated to their beds. The first streaky clouds were changing from black to gray.