Pulse

by Michael Harvey

  He got up and cracked a window, then circled the room in a prowl, picking up various objects and putting them down. Simon’s desk was its usual mess, which was why he almost missed the envelope set in the very center, DANIEL scrawled across the front in slanting lines of lead. He tore open the envelope and took out the single sheet inside.

  ON THE ROOF IF YOU WANT TO TALK. SIMON

  * * *

  It took him ten minutes to find the staircase that twisted to the roof. Simon was sitting on a stool at the eastern edge of the building, staring out over the city with a sketch pad on his easel and colored pencils strewn at his feet like tiny licks of light. He was bundled up in a long coat and spoke without turning.

  “A father has a dream. In it his wife is strangled by their infant son. The father has had these dreams his entire life and, one way or another, they always come true. So he becomes convinced this horrible thing will happen. One night while his wife is sleeping, the father leans into the crib with a hatchet and hacks off his son’s hands at the wrists. The father goes to prison. The woman remarries and has another son, who strangles her one night in her sleep when she’s deep into her seventies. Meanwhile, the father spends his life locked in a cell while the son he made a cripple visits him every Sunday and is the only person there when they wheel him out in a coffin.”

  “What’s the point?”

  “I know about Harry. I’m sorry.”

  “I was with the police all night.”

  Simon nodded but still didn’t turn his head. Daniel took a seat on a wall that ran along the edge of the roof. From where he sat he couldn’t see the sketch Simon had been working on and wondered if that was by design.

  “He was killed in an alley in the Combat Zone. I wound up down there myself. I wasn’t really sure how, but I knew where to go and knew what I’d find.”

  “I’m sure the police were curious about that.”

  “They asked some questions.”

  Simon slipped the sketch into a sewn leather case he kept by his feet and zipped it up. Then he swung around on his stool, the case laid across his lap. “Did you tell them about the gun?”

  “What gun?”

  Simon dismissed the response with a shrug.

  “Have you been through my stuff?”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “No.”

  “Good. And, no, I haven’t been through your belongings.”

  “You don’t think I could have stopped what was going to happen to Harry?”

  “I think that’s what Harry would tell you.”

  “How do you know about the gun?”

  “There are two major sources of energy in this world. Any idea what they are?”

  Daniel shook his head.

  “Love and hate. People think of them as feelings or emotions, but they’re actually physical, tangible, measurable forces. In fact, they provide the foundation for everything they seem to oppose.”

  “Oppose?”

  “Math, technology, logic, reason—they all live in the tension between these two. When you get into an entangled state . . . and you were in an entangled state when you found your brother, no doubt about that . . . when you’re in that state, you’re enmeshed in their paradox, trading on the physical energy of one or the other.”

  “I didn’t feel hatred. I don’t feel hatred.”

  “No? Why the gun?”

  Daniel felt the lie he’d told like a dark rain in his chest.

  “It’s all right, Daniel. In fact, it’s inevitable.” Simon swept a long arm across the tatter of Boston’s skyline. “The energy exists whether you understand its nature or not. It’s what holds all this together—from the structure of the atom to the architecture of the universe, the blood that pumps in our veins and the infinity of a single kiss, everything you see, everything you don’t, humming along faster than the speed of light, binding and pulling, usually at the same time. Some people cast it as a battle between good and evil, but those are moral, subjective measures. Relative only to each other.”

  “And you’re talking about something that’s absolute?”

  “I’m talking about science. The reality is we’re just beginning to see the first glimpses of how it all works.”

  “Which is how?”

  Simon shrugged. “Imperfectly, like everything else in Nature. Sometimes hate is the answer. The need to separate and split things apart. The need to fight, to rage, to use that elemental bloodlust to accomplish one’s goal. Sometimes it’s love. Sometimes when we hate, we spin out a yarn of love somewhere else. And when we truly love, it nurtures hate. The truth is both can wound and both can kill. They just leave very different marks.”

  “Harry was pure love. At least for me.”

  “I believe you.”

  Daniel looked down into the guts of Kenmore Square, curled gray snakes of cars and buses clogging the streets, people on foot filling the gaps between.

  “I used to do all my calculations, the higher math stuff, on white sheets of paper,” Simon said. “Used a black pencil, strong, thick lead. Then one day I stopped.”

  “Using the pencil?”

  “Doing the math. Harvard didn’t like it, but fuck Harvard, right? Have you checked me out with them yet?”

  “Should I?”

  “You probably have better things to do.”

  “I was just thinking everything never seemed so random.”

  “The person who killed your brother will be delivered to you, Daniel. His life will be in your hands. That’s what the gun is for.”

  “Did you know Harry was going to die?”

  Simon considered him with a sadness that threatened to break him in two.

  “What is it?” Daniel said.

  “Do you like the girl?”

  “What girl?”

  Simon pointed. “The girl.”

  Grace was sitting on the steps of Music City, a hand shading her eyes, looking hard at the roof.

  22

  THE MATTRESS just wasn’t made for two-fifty-plus pounds of detective. Barkley cursed and rolled onto his back, searching for a halfway comfortable spot. The mattress read his mind and shoved a metal spring up his spine. Message fucking received. He sat up and reached for his watch, nestled in his suit coat, which was folded in a neat bundle. It was just nine. He’d gotten two hours of solid sleep, not great but it would have to do.

  Barkley stood and stretched, his reach filling the converted storage room from stem to stern. The first stories would be out by now. He could feel them circulating through Boston’s bloodstream. He’d wanted to limit his presser to details about the victim. His boss was all about covering the department’s collective ass, insisting specifics about Toney’s photos be included so the city could see the Boston PD was on the fucking job. In the end, they’d compromised. Barkley didn’t mention the pictures but did confirm they had a suspect—young, black, and in the wind. Now, the shitstorm.

  Barkley walked into the squad room and plucked a newspaper off the nearest desk. The Herald’s headline was an inch high, in bold, black type.

  HARVARD FOOTBALL PLAYER SLAIN IN THE COMBAT ZONE

  BLACK SUSPECT STILL AT LARGE

  The department could try to downplay the racial angle all it wanted, but the press knew. And the public knew. In Boston, three years into the death march that had become forced busing, the Athens of America was bleeding, black and white and bigotry all over. Throw in Harvard and the stew of emotions that institution stirred up and the Fitzsimmons murder was big news. Letting a black detective run point on the investigation? Hell, that was just icing on the cake.

  Barkley dropped the paper back onto the desk and went into the bathroom. He washed his hands and face, then got a cup of coffee from his machine. A couple of detectives gave him a shout as he made his way to his desk, but Barkley didn’t play well with others. No wonder they paired him with Dillon. He’d told Tommy to go home, but Barkley knew that wasn’t gonna happen. His partner was pure hunting dog. Barkley had give
n him a scent and Tommy was gonna scare up a couple of bones before he called it quits. So it was no big surprise when Barkley found a stack of files on his desk—background on Harry Fitzsimmons and the younger brother. A folder on top caught Barkley’s eye. Tommy had taped a piece of paper to the front and scrawled on it in big fucking Tommy letters.

  READ THIS ONE FIRST

  Barkley took a sip of coffee and pulled across the file. It was an accident report from 1968. The name of the sole fatality was typed on the first page. Violet Anne Fitzsimmons, aged twenty-nine. The only witness, her eight-year-old son, Daniel Patrick. Barkley took another sip of coffee and cracked the file. A half hour later he picked up the phone and called out to the uniform who’d helped him with Toney. Charlie Herbert had dropped off the photographer at his place and was working on running down his phone records.

  “Good. Do me a favor. Pull anything you can find on Violet Fitzsimmons. Lemme give you some details.” Barkley talked to Herbert for another ten minutes, then hung up. An hour later he was hip deep in Violet’s life, Herbert coming in and out with the occasional tidbit. And there were tidbits. Barkley pulled across the phone and dialed a number.

  “McShane.”

  He smiled at her voice—the best kind of smile cuz it happened before he ever realized it. Catherine McShane was the county’s medical examiner. A graduate of Holy Cross and Johns Hopkins medical school, the good Irish girl from Milton had returned home as the freshly minted ME a couple of years back. Barkley had worked with her on a handful of cases. He’d also asked her out for a drink and, surprisingly, she’d accepted. The drink had turned into dinner, then a stroll through a soft summer night to her flat in the Back Bay. He’d promised to call, meant to call. That was almost six months ago.

  “Hey, Cat.”

  “Detective Jones. How can I help?”

  Why hadn’t he called this woman? The truth was he’d had a great time. Almost enough to forget he was big and black and scary as hell and she was straight masterpiece beautiful, face full of perfect lines and pleasing angles, the result of generations of money and careful breeding. It was easy to say that shouldn’t matter, but this was Boston and the only black people Barkley ever saw at a Celtics game were playing ball. Double down on that for Fenway Park and all points in between. Maybe that was why he’d bailed. Or maybe he was just like every other guy. Running scared.

  “I owe you a call, Cat. I’m sorry.”

  “There’s no need to apologize.”

  “Sure there is.”

  “You realize I could have picked up the phone?”

  “Never thought of that.”

  “What a surprise. I like you, Bark. Like talking to you. I just don’t want to date you. And it’s got nothing to do with color.”

  “Did I say that?”

  “You’re not nearly as hard to read as you think. The truth is you’re not ready to date anyone. Not now, at least.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “I just do. If I’m wrong, so be it. But I’m not.”

  She’d pinned him like a butterfly to a mounting board. Ready for dissection. Barkley needed to do something quick before she pulled out the magnifying glass and tweezers.

  “So you don’t hate me?”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “What?”

  “Are you listening? You’re my friend. And that doesn’t shake easy, at least not for me. Besides, you’re gonna need all the help you can get.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “The radio just described you as the high-profile black detective investigating the stabbing death of a white football player from Harvard. Might as well make it easy on everyone and turn yourself in as his killer.”

  “Shit.”

  “Rolling downhill. And then some.”

  “How you doing with him?”

  “Another couple of hours and I should have the basics. Toxicology’s gonna be a while.”

  “Talk to me on this one first, all right?”

  “You know how I operate. Your eyes only.”

  “Thanks, Cat.”

  “Not a problem. That it?”

  Barkley ran a finger across the dog-eared pages of Violet Fitzsimmons’s file. “I’m looking at an old case. Nineteen sixty-eight. Deceased’s car jumped a seawall near a beach in Dorchester. Fire department found her in the front seat. Eight-year-old son was with her and survived.”

  “Deceased’s name was Violet Fitzsimmons. Your victim’s mother.”

  “How’d you know that?”

  “What do you think, we’re a bunch of idiots over here?”

  “I’ve always thought of you as ghouls with long, sharp knives.”

  “Funny. We like to do a little background on our high-profile cases. When we ran Harry Fitzsimmons’s name, the mom popped up. I assume the boy in the crash is Harry’s younger brother?”

  “Name’s Daniel.”

  “I saw that in the report. So what’s bothering you?”

  “It says she went through the windshield. Suffered several blunt force injuries consistent with the crash, but none of them were fatal.”

  “So?”

  “The cause of death was listed as asphyxiation. I also noticed she suffered a fractured hyoid bone.”

  “Where you headed, Detective?”

  “When I see fractured hyoid, I think manual strangulation.”

  “Do you really?”

  “I do.”

  “It can happen in other ways.”

  “Like a car crash?”

  “Why not? Probably slammed her throat against the steering wheel.”

  “You ever seen that?”

  “No, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen.”

  “You saw the fingerprint?”

  “I told you I reviewed the file.”

  Forensics had pulled a single bloody print off the hollow of Violet Fitzsimmons’s neck, a fourteen-point match to eight-year-old Daniel’s thumb.

  “What do you think about that?” Barkley said.

  “As I recall, the boy said something about trying to resuscitate his mom.”

  “By choking her?”

  “He was eight, Bark. What does this have to do with your case?”

  “It also says in the report they found him wandering away from the car covered in his mother’s blood.”

  “He was in shock. He’d just crawled over her dead body to get out of the wreck.”

  “And the time he spent in the hospital?”

  “I’m not an expert, but I’d guess some form of post-traumatic stress disorder.”

  “English, please.”

  “They’re seeing a lot of it in soldiers coming back from ’Nam. The boy’s mind couldn’t take what had happened so he withdrew. You’d have to ask his doctors, but I’ve read about cases where people sat in a room and stared at the wall for the better part of a year.”

  “From what I understand, this kid slipped into a coma.”

  “Not unheard of, especially if he suffered physical trauma from the crash.”

  “So he couldn’t have been faking it.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Would he remember anything about the accident, aftermath?”

  “Might not. That’s the whole point. The mind is trying to protect itself from something it can’t handle. What does any of this have to do with your murder?”

  “Daniel’s sixteen now and stumbled into the alley last night as we were working on his brother.”

  “Did he see the body?”

  “Hell, yeah.”

  “Wow.”

  “I’m assuming that’s not a good ‘wow.’”

  “Again, I’m no psychiatrist, but I’d guess that could trigger a lot of bad things.”

  Barkley was suddenly very happy he hadn’t told Cat about letting Daniel visit his brother’s body at Boston City. “What kind of things?”

  “I don’t know. Flashbacks, hyperarousal, withdrawal . . .”

  “What the Christ is hyperarousal?”
/>
  “Inability to sleep or focus, irritability sometimes escalating to irrational, self-destructive behavior, aggressiveness, violence, delusions. Can go a lot of different ways.”

  “All right. Thanks.”

  “You don’t seriously believe this boy tried to strangle his mother?”

  “Not really. It’s just the pieces. I see them lying there in the file and can’t help trying to fit ’em together.”

  “You want me to dig a little deeper on Daniel?”

  “Can you do that?”

  “Wasn’t that your goal all along?”

  “Mostly I was just hoping you’d take the call.”

  “I’ll poke around and see if anyone remembers anything.” Cat paused like she was writing something down. “Meantime, I’ve done my preliminary exam and there’s one thing that’s a little curious about your victim. I mean, there might be more, but there’s one thing right off the bat that bothers me.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “The wounds. Did you notice anything?”

  “Yeah. They were fatal.”

  “When we examined them, it was obvious he was attacked with two different weapons.”

  Barkley pulled his feet off his desk and sat up in his chair. “How do you know that?”

  “Easy. There’s a slash mark on the sleeve of his coat and what appears to be a related wound to the abdomen.”

  “Consistent with a knife attack?”

  “Yes, but the abdomen wound was not fatal. What killed your football player were three puncture wounds. All driven in just under the rib cage, two exiting in the back.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yes. These wounds are small and square, tightly packed together.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “There’s no way they were made by a knife, certainly not the same knife that slashed him in the stomach. Whoever killed Harry Fitzsimmons got very close. And made no mistake.”

  “You’re telling me this wasn’t an alley fight?”

  “I’m telling you this guy was gutted and put on a spit. Maybe that’s what alley fights have come to these days, but you’d know better than I. I’ll call you when I have more. And Bark?”

  “Still here.”

  “If he’s not already, make sure Daniel Fitzsimmons gets himself to a therapist.”