The Dead Room dm-3

by Chris Mooney

  She removed her mobile and dialled 911. ‘I think you’ve punctured a lung so I’m going to have to leave you right here until the ambulance arrives. If I lay you on the floor, you won’t be able to breathe.’

  Darby gave the dispatcher the address and asked for emergency assistance over the woman’s wheezing, painful sobs. In the distance she could hear police sirens.

  Darby hung up and approached the priest. She saw, scattered across the floor near his legs, an empty bottle of scotch, a ratty leather briefcase and a syringe. Candle and burnt spoon.

  ‘What’s your name, Father?’

  The priest gritted his teeth, hissing back the pain. ‘I want a lawyer.’

  The woman’s head lifted.

  ‘Preeee,’ the woman wheezed. ‘Hump… ah…prey.’

  Darby felt the skin of her face tighten against the bone. ‘Father Humphrey. From Charlestown?’

  He didn’t answer the question. He choked on the pain, tears welling up his eyes.

  ‘I asked you a question,’ Darby said, and brought her foot down on his shoulder.

  The priest howled. He gripped her ankle and tried to push it away. Darby twisted her foot.

  ‘Yes! Yes, I used to be in Charlestown, now STOP, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE STOP!!!’

  She kept twisting her foot, her entire body shaking. ‘Do you remember a boy named Jackson Cooper? He lived in Charlestown.’

  ‘I don’t know him.’

  ‘Yes, you do. You molested him. Repeatedly.’

  ‘I WANT A LAWYER!’

  Darby released her foot.

  The priest curled into a foetal position and started sobbing.

  She raised the gun. ‘Look at me.’

  His lips quivered. ‘You can’t,’ he said, and started to cry. ‘I’m a man of God.’

  ‘Not my God,’ Darby said, and shot him in the head.

  67

  The gunshot had startled the woman. Her head shot up and she started coughing up blood.

  Darby moved next to her. ‘You’re safe. They’re all dead.’

  The woman trembled against her restraints. Blood trickled down her chin. She was trying to speak.

  ‘Say that again?’ Darby moved her ear close to the woman’s lips.

  ‘Kevin… ah… ah…’

  ‘Reynolds?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I cuffed him downstairs. He can’t hurt you.’

  ‘Babies,’ she wheezed.

  ‘What babies?’

  ‘Sons… ah… Michael. Carter.’

  ‘They’re here? In the house?’

  ‘Hiding. Michael…. ah… hid brother. Safe.’

  ‘Where are they hiding?’

  ‘Dead… ah… room.’

  Dead room? She must have meant bedroom.

  ‘Safe,’ the woman said. ‘Hiding underneath… ah… bed.’

  ‘I’ll go get them.’ Darby opened the door.

  ‘Ma-Ma-Ma-Michael!’ Russo’s scream was a wet, crackling wheeze. ‘Come… ah… out.’

  Darby ran across the dark hallway.

  ‘Come. Ah… ah… safe. Okay.’

  Darby stepped up to the door with the broken lock. Almost pitch black in there; the light-blocking shades had been drawn. She searched the wall and found the light switch.

  Dried blood screamed from the walls. Pools of it covered the carpets and valance.

  ‘Bed,’ Russo wheezed. ‘Un… ah… Un… der… ah… neath.’

  Darby got down on her hands and knees and gripped the valance. Dust blew into her face as she leaned forward and looked underneath the bed.

  Nobody was there.

  68

  Jamie forced an eye open. Everything was blurry. She could see light down at the end of the hall, in the dead room. One of her boys was scrambling out from underneath the bed – Carter. She could make out the Batman mask hanging around his neck.

  They’re safe. My babies are safe.

  Jamie started to cry. ‘Okay… Carter. Okay, ah… now.’

  Carter’s tiny feet thumped across the hall. The woman detective didn’t bother to try to stop him.

  Michael was fast. He scooped up his brother before he reached the doorway. Carter tried to fight. He kicked and screamed. Michael turned him around and gripped him fiercely against his chest so he couldn’t turn and see the bedroom.

  But Michael was staring, his wide-eyed gaze locked on Father Humphrey’s corpse and what little remained of the priest’s head.

  Jamie drew in a deep breath, the feeling like razor blades slicing through her lungs, and tried to scream.

  ‘Go, Michael!’ she cried. ‘La… ah… ah… Go!’

  He didn’t leave. He whisked his attention from Father Humphrey to her and kept gulping air. Carter kept wailing and the goddamn detective kept standing at the end of the hall not saying or doing a goddamn thing.

  Jamie looked at the detective and tried to scream the words: ‘Take… ah… them.’

  The woman didn’t move, just stood there staring back at her with those piercing green eyes.

  Jamie bucked against the rope, almost tipping over her chair.

  ‘TAKE…’

  Her lungs burned with a crackling sound.

  ‘TAKE… AWAY…BABIES.’

  Darby heard the policemen running through the downstairs rooms. Heard them shouting orders as doors slammed open and shut. She didn’t move or speak. Stood in the hallway frozen, watching in horror as the woman tied to the chair had an imaginary conversation with her two children – two boys the woman believed had been hiding underneath the bed of a room covered in dried blood.

  ‘Take… ah… please,’ the woman begged in her fractured speech. ‘Take.’

  A shadow moved across the wall near the stairwell. Darby saw a young male patrolman standing on the stairs aiming his handgun at her.

  ‘Freeze.’ He crept up another step.

  Darby raised her hands slowly. Then she clasped her hands behind her head and spoke in a loud, clear voice.

  ‘My name is Darby McCormick. I’m a special investigator for Boston’s Criminal Services Unit. My wallet and ID are in my back pocket.’

  ‘On the floor. On your stomach.’

  Slowly she dropped to her knees. ‘I’m armed. Shotgun and a SIG tucked in my right pocket.’

  Darby lay against the floor, hands clasped behind her head. The patrolman did what he was trained to do. He grabbed her wrists, yanked them around her back and cuffed her.

  She rolled her head to the side. ‘The woman in the master bedroom is tied to a chair,’ Darby said. ‘She has a punctured lung. Don’t move her. When the ambulance techs come, make sure you tell them.’

  Knee-high black tactical boots tucked inside dark blue trousers rushed up the steps. A pair stepped up next to her and three more rushed inside the bedroom.

  ‘Don’t untie her,’ the young patrolman called out. ‘She might have a punctured lung.’

  Darby felt a muzzle pressed against the back of her head. Heard someone trying to unclip the strap for the shotgun. Hands patted her down and hands pulled everything from her pockets.

  A pair of EMTs came up the stairs. Darby stared off into space, trying to make out the conversation of the men barking orders downstairs. She could barely hear them over the crackle of radios surrounding her. She kept hearing one say ‘Jesus Christ’ over and over again.

  A chest mike crackled and Darby heard a dispatcher’s voice in a sea of static relay her information.

  ‘Looks like you’re legit,’ the young patrolman said. He undid her cuffs.

  Darby stood in front of five men, their gaze bearing down on her. The tall one with the pie-shaped face said, ‘You mind telling us just what the hell is going on?’

  Darby collected her things. ‘Who’s the detective in charge?’

  ‘Branham.’

  ‘I’ll speak to him when he gets here.’

  ‘I asked you a question, missy.’

  ‘Get the hell out of here. All of you. You’re di
srupting a crime scene.’

  Darby brushed past pie-face and moved to the other rooms.

  A baby boy’s room, decorated like something out of a Pottery Barn catalogue. The name CARTER was stencilled on the blue painted wall above a white crib. A mobile was covered in a thick layer of dust. All the furniture was – the chest-of-drawers and matching changing table, the oak shelves holding diapers and bottles and tubes of lotion.

  The room across the hall belonged to an older boy. Racecar-shaped bed, the sheets unmade. Star Wars action figures and space ships scattered along the floor and play table, everything covered in dust.

  Nobody had been inside either of these rooms for years.

  A note on the bed, written in pencil: Michael, I’ll be home soon. Needed to go to the hospital. No camp today. You can stay home with Carter. Stay inside until I come home, and make sure the doors are locked. Love you, Mom.

  Darby stepped back into the hall thinking of Sean Sheppard.

  The ambulance tech, a pudgy man with curly blond hair, walked into the hall. He blinked in surprise to see Darby standing instead of cuffed. She showed the man her ID.

  ‘Are the kids downstairs?’ he asked.

  ‘There are no kids.’

  The man frowned. ‘She said they went downstairs. Wanted me to go check them out and make sure they were okay.’

  ‘The kids aren’t here. They’re dead.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You’re not supposed to,’ Darby said and walked down the steps. The air was heavy with gun smoke.

  Kevin Reynolds lay dead on the kitchen floor. An older patrolman with a pot-belly and ruddy cheeks hovered close to the body.

  ‘Is Detective Branham here?’ Darby asked.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘See that Glock lying on the floor? That weapon and those spent shells are most likely going to be an exact match to a recent homicide in a home in Charlestown. When Detective Branham gets here, tell him I’ll be out front. I want to talk to him about this man lying here.’

  ‘Kevin Reynolds.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘We tried to pin this son of a bitch down for what we think he did here about five years ago to this woman named Jamie Russo. Some sort of home invasion. Broke into the house, tied up the family in the upstairs bedroom and shot the two boys to death. Mother survived.’

  ‘What about the husband?’

  ‘Stuck his hand in a waste-disposal unit and strangled him – don’t ask me why, I don’t know. Nobody does.’

  Darby stared down at Reynolds thinking about the room upstairs, the room with the lock and the dried blood splattered across the floor and walls.

  ‘How old were the kids when they died?’

  ‘Youngest was a toddler… one or two, I forget.’ Darby saw the room with the crib and mobile covered in dust. ‘And the older one?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  She heard footsteps coming down the stairwell. She moved into the foyer and watched as the two EMTs carried the woman, strapped now to a gurney, IV lines in her arm and oxygen mask on her face.

  Darby didn’t realize the old-time cop had stepped up next to her until he spoke.

  ‘Jesus H. Bloody Christ. That’s her. That’s Russo.’

  Darby watched as the EMTs wheeled the woman across the front door’s threshold and then navigated the gurney down the steps.

  ‘What was his name?’ she asked the cop.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Russo’s older son.’

  ‘Don’t remember.’

  ‘She does,’ Darby said.

  69

  Darby staggered outside into a muggy night air drizzling with rain. Flashing blue, red and white strobe lights lit up the entire neighbourhood. At least half a dozen Wellesley police cruisers blocked off the street, parked at the far ends to give enough room for the two ambulances – and now a fire truck. She could hear its high-pitched siren wailing in the distance, building.

  The driveway, covered in shards of glass and a couple of empty shotgun shells, had been taped off. A light grey smoke drifted from the gaps in Chadzynski’s crumpled bonnet – the reason the fire department had been summoned. Darby watched two patrolmen tape off the body, its limbs twisted and broken, lying on the grass. Warner, the head of Christina Chadzynski’s Anti-Corruption Unit. More like the woman’s personal hit squad, Darby thought, catching sight of the wet blood on the man’s torn clothes.

  She needed to find a quiet place to call Coop. She walked numbly across the damp grass and into a big garden with overgrown grass.

  At the far end she spotted a hammock set up between two thick pine trees. That looked good. Her legs carried her there and then fluttered with fatigue and relief after she plunked herself down on the wet fabric. Her heart thumped dully inside her chest, as if it wanted to go to sleep.

  Shadows moved across the grass, which was lit by the windows of the house – every light had been turned on. Darby’s gaze drifted up to the windows of the room with the dried blood splattered against the walls and carpet. She thought of her mother sitting on the side of her father’s hospital bed, Sheila holding Big Red’s rough and callused hand on her lap and reciting lines from Dylan Thomas’s ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’, a poem her mother knew by heart. Sheila had said ‘bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray’ as the doctor shut off the life support machine. When her mother reached the end of the poem, she started again, holding back tears and saying the words clearly as she waited for Big Red’s body to die.

  When the fire truck’s siren shut off, the only sound now the thudding throb of its engine, she took out her phone and dialled Coop’s number. One ring and he picked up.

  ‘Christ, Darby, where the hell have you been? I’ve been calling you for the past hour.’

  Hearing his voice released the tightness inside her chest. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine, but I’ve been worried sick about you. I got that voice clip you sent me. What’s going on? Why didn’t you call me back?’

  ‘I met Father Humphrey.’

  Coop didn’t speak. She could hear chatter and noises on the other end of the line. He’s at the airport, she thought, and her heart started racing.

  ‘He’s dead, Coop. So is Kevin Reynolds. You don’t have to leave.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I’ll tell you in person. Where can I meet you?’

  ‘I’m at the airport.’

  ‘You don’t have to leave,’ she said again. ‘You and your sister can come home.’

  ‘I’m going to London.’

  She felt short of breath.

  Don’t leave, she wanted to say. I need you here. With me.

  ‘I’ve got to go, Darby. Final boarding call.’

  She could hear the sadness in his voice. No, that’s not entirely true. She also heard relief. In six hours he would be walking through a new airport halfway around the world, walking through a new country where nobody knew his secrets. Where he could start afresh, maybe even reinvent himself.

  ‘Take another flight, Coop. I’ll pay for it. I want to see you before you go. Spend some time and talk –’

  ‘It won’t change anything.’

  ‘Just listen to me for a moment.’ She knew what she wanted to say – words that rushed through her a lot these days every time she saw Coop – but couldn’t put them together.

  Start with what happened back at the house.

  ‘This afternoon, when you were about to leave, you came back.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have done that,’ he said.

  ‘I’m glad you did. I…’

  Why is this so goddamn hard?

  ‘I just wanted to say… I…’

  ‘I know’, he said. ‘I feel the same way, for whatever it’s worth.’

  ‘It’s worth a lot.’ And I was too stupid or too scared or too selfish or all of the above and probably a hundred other things to act on it. But I don’t want you to leave. I don’t think I’ll be able
to live with that.

  ‘If you feel that way,’ Darby said, ‘then don’t leave.’

  ‘I have to. I’ve wanted to get away from here for a long time. There’s no reason for me to stay.’

  What about me? I’m not a good enough reason?

  ‘I’ve really got to go,’ he said.

  Darby squeezed her eyes shut.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, choking on the word. ‘Have a safe flight.’

  ‘Bye, Darb.’

  ‘Bye.’

  A soft click and the airport noise disappeared. Coop was gone.

  70

  Jamie lay on a gurney in the back of the wailing ambulance. With the use of her good eye, she watched the EMT with the pudgy face and curly hair clip an IV bag above her head. She tried to speak to him but her words were lost inside the oxygen mask covering her mouth.

  She didn’t feel any physical pain. They had given her some sort of shot and the pain had disappeared but not the worry. No cruiser-load of dope could take that away. That and love.

  The EMT moved away in a blur and disappeared. Michael took his spot. He knelt down next to her and a moment later she felt his cold hands clamp around hers. The anxiety vanished, her heart swelling with relief. And love. He could be a stubborn shit, yes, but she loved him, Christ, she did, and if she could have one wish right now it was that Michael might know what she carried inside her heart.

  Michael’s face crumpled. ‘I’m so sorry, Mom.’

  She wanted to take off the mask and speak to him but the EMTs had strapped her down so she couldn’t move.

  ‘You… ah… did right… ah… thing,’ she said, knowing Michael couldn’t hear her but still needing to say the words.

  ‘I wanted to run downstairs to the phone but I was afraid to leave Carter alone. I didn’t want anything to happen to him. If anything did, you’d hate me.’

  ‘Proud,’ she said. ‘Proud… of… ah… you.’

  Michael started sobbing. ‘He was so scared, Mom. So scared. I put my hands over his ears when you started screaming. I turned his face so he wouldn’t see anything. I had my hands over his ears and he could still hear you screaming and he was starting to cry and I wanted to run – we both did – but I kept whispering to him that he had to be quiet. He had to be quiet no matter how much he was scared ’cause that was the only way we could protect you.’