THE DEAD SOUL: A Thriller

by M. William Phelps

  “Any luck with that security guard lead?” Dickie asked. He shut off the lights.

  “Naw. Nothing there.” They both knew it was going to be a dead end. “Something’s come up, though. That’s why I’m here. Let’s go. I’ll explain on the way.”

  Outside on the front lawn, Dickie told Caroline he’d be back—“with any luck”— around six. She waved to Jake. “Give Dawn a kiss for me. If she ever wants to join me for yoga class, tell her to call.”

  Jake cranked the ignition. Put the car in reverse, got out onto the open road.

  “You want to talk about Mo?” Dickie asked. “I did some checking, heard some ‘things.’ Word is there is some tension brewing between you two.”

  Jake gave his partner a look. “I’m dealing with that, Dick. Keep out of it.” Then: “How’s Maddox?” Maddox Shaughnessy was Dickie and Caroline’s twenty-three-year-old boy, stationed in Baghdad, E-Co. 1/329.th The kid had been a Marine for almost five years. He was born, Dickie liked to say, with that camouflage green and black war paint under his eyes.

  Rambo Jr.

  “He’s getting by. Should be home in about four months. But says his new tour starts two months later.”

  Military, Jake thought. Huh. He stared at Dickie. Listening to him talk about his son, Jake could picture some Muslim teenager wearing a backpack full of explosives and nails walking into a café, setting it down, blowing up the place with Dickie’s boy inside. He wondered how Dickie lived with that fear day in, day out.

  “What’a ya got, man?” Dickie wanted off the subject of the military.

  Jake explained a call he had taken from a guy named John Branford. Branford worked out of the Danvers Police Department, an hour north of Boston, a small hamlet close to that fishing village made famous by Sebastian Junger’s Perfect Storm. The cop claimed to have valid information about what he called “that serial murder case.” Jake was skeptical, but knew cases got solved like this sometimes. One cop talking to another, both searching for the same answer. Old-school gumshoe police work.

  As Jake explained it to Dickie, Captain Branford said he “saw an article in the Globe about the Boston Public Garden DB, and stated asking around. Wanted to know if it’s true that the Common case was connected to Quincy Market.”

  “Might be,” Jake had told him. He pictured the cop twirling a toothpick in his mouth. Sitting back. Feet up on his desk. Enjoying the moment.

  “I need to speak to you,” Branford said.

  “I’m listening.”

  “In person.”

  The guy is willing to travel an hour. Must have something.

  Jake drove by the T near Fenway Park. Dickie was scrolling through his voicemail message numbers to see who had called.

  “So we’re heading over to meet him,” Jake said, parking near a meter on Boylston Street in Kenmore Square.

  They walked into the Back Bay Pub, a little dive tucked in between a Star Market and Riley’s Laundromat. Branford was not what Jake had expected. A small man, five-foot-six, 120 pounds, skinny as a jockey. He wore a black blazer. Brown bolo tie. White dress shirt. Blue jeans. Cowboy boots. A ball cap with a large gold star on the front. He had a lazy eye that would not stop twitching.

  Jake walked over, stuck out his hand. “This is my partner, Detective Shaughnessy.”

  Dickie waved.

  “I recognize you both from the Globe,” the captain said as if he wanted Jake’s job or an autograph.

  Jake forced a smile. Dickie leaned against a wooden beam with names and obscenities carved into it. There were black cigarette burns in the red carpet below his feet.

  “I think I have an idea of maybe someone you need to take a serious look at. It all made sense to me when I found out why he requested a transfer.”

  “So far you’re speaking a foreign language, Captain. Sorry.” Jake raised his eyebrows. “What do you have here?”

  “He worked for me. Not a bad cop. Just wasn’t any good.” He laughed at his own turn of a phrase. “I did some checking. Found out he had a certain problem with young blondes. Also found out he got his self kicked off the Bangor force in Maine before coming to me, beggin’ for a job. Apparently, he waited outside the local high school up there and drove some of the girls home in his squad car. Said some creepy things.”

  Jake wondered where this was going. A cop. Problem with blondes. It could fit. Then again, the guy sounded more like a loser rather than a killer.

  Dickie watched a guy at the bar stirring his drink with a red plastic sizzle stick.

  “We transferred him to your unit last May, a week or so before that Bettencourt kid went missing. Your lieutenant approved the transfer. Guess he knew the kid’s uncle or something.”

  “Name?”

  “He walks with a bum knee, kinda sliding it along. Name’s Mark Stanhope.”

  Jake and Dickie looked at each other.

  “Why did he ‘request’ a transfer?”

  “He wanted to be,” Branford said, “closer to the action downtown. Truth is, though, he knew we were about to find out he was peeping on some young chick—a blonde, of course—every morning where he stopped for coffee at this diner. He’d follow her into the bathroom. She never knew until one day she happened to look up and caught him peering over the wall, underneath the ceiling tile.”

  “Never liked Officer Stanhope,” Jake said.

  “I heard you guys got a nickname for him?” Branford said.

  “B-B-B-Benny,” Dickie said, laughing.

  “We call him Rookie,” Jake said. “Appreciate this info.”

  11

  Friday, September 5 – 2:00 P.M.

  Traffic was light for an early Friday afternoon downtown. Most everyone had their windows up, AC on. The digital temperature reading on the LCD clock over Copley Square read a balmy 97 degrees.

  Driving into the city on the Mass Pike, eastbound, the Carmichaels were headed to Maine to spend the weekend with relatives. Jason Carmichael drove the family maroon Suburban. His wife sat shotgun. Their ten-year-old, Jeffrey, sat in back behind Dad. It was little Jeffrey’s job to keep Sergeant Bilko, their four-year-old Lab, occupied. Jason listened to talk radio, WRKO, disagreeing with just about everything.

  “See that, Jeffrey?” Jason leaned down, pointed to his right, looked out the passengers-side window. “That’s the backside of the Green Monster, Fenway Park.”

  “Cool!” Jeffrey said. He moved over to get a better look. Stared out the window. Buckled himself into the backseat on his mom’s side.

  They drove under the Prudential Center and, as it got dark, the roar of a Harley echoed up along the left side, and the motorcyclist pulled in front of Jason.

  “In about a half-mile,” Jason announced, “we’ll be coming up to the new Ted Williams Tunnel, part of the Big Dig project that cost the city billions. We’ll actually be driving under Boston Harbor, Jeffrey.”

  Marjorie Carmichael said, “Billion, Jay. Not billions.”

  “Awesome,” said Jeffrey.

  It got a bit dark as they entered the tunnel. The fluorescent lights along the corner of the roof were bright, but only if you were stopped.

  Jason noticed the Harley dude had one of those barbed-wire tattoos around his bicep. How damn passé are those tats nowadays? The woman on the back of the bike had an average ass, Jason considered. There was an angel tattoo above her plumber’s crack. Jason checked her out. She was hot, he thought, in a skanky, Lucinda Williams sort of way.

  Do-able, he’d tell the boys at work Monday morning.

  The biker hit his brakes, illuminating the inside of the Carmichaels’ Suburban.

  Jason slowed down, a squeal from the vehicle’s front rotors. “Traffic … damn-it.”

  “Relax now, honey. We’re on vacation.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  “This is something, Dad,” Jeffrey said from the backseat. “I can see my PSP like it’s nighttime.” Jeffrey played Super Mario Bros 3.

  The line of cars, bikes, SUV
s and taxis inched forward.

  Jason was fixated on the little license plate strapped to the back of the Harley in front of him. He killed time memorizing it.

  CVD-431. Connecticut. The Constitution State.

  Sitting, frustrated by the traffic, Jason was startled by the sound of a pebble hitting the windshield.

  Huh? He watched it bounce to the ground just outside his door. It was white, like chalk.

  Then another.

  Weird?

  Traffic moved up about ten feet at a time. Stop and go.

  Several more pebbles fell on the windshield, bounced onto the ground.

  “What the heck?” Jason said to himself. He looked out the window, up at the ceiling.

  Marjorie fiddled with the dial, switching radio stations, trying to find anything other than the static coming in underneath the water.

  “Screw it,” she said. Then reached above and pulled down the sun visor and looked through a library of CDs.

  Jason zeroed in on a section of the tunnel’s ceiling. It was loose and flapping, as if it wasn’t attached in one corner. Several pebbles fell on the windshield.

  What the hell … It wasn’t registering.

  A large piece of cement, about the size of a cigarette pack, fell and cracked the Carmichael’s windshield.

  “What was that?” Marjorie asked in alarm, jumping back, CDs splaying all over her lap and floorboard.

  Jason looked out the window, up at the ceiling again. “Oh my God.”

  The tunnel erupted with an enormous boom.

  Dust spread everywhere, causing blind panic. People screamed. Car alarms sounded. Chirps of tires reverberated. It had happened so quickly no one knew what was going on.

  The Carmichaels, the Harley dude with his biker babe, not to mention everyone else inside the tunnel, were not going to make it to the other side on this day. A twelve-ton section of the newly opened Ted Williams Tunnel had let go. One of the steel tiebacks holding a forty-foot segment of the ceiling over the eastbound portion of the interstate had caved in onto several cars waiting in traffic.

  The fallen debris had just missed flattening the biker and his girlfriend. Unfortunately, as people got out of their vehicles and converged on the maroon Suburban behind the Harley, they were horrified to see that the heaviest section of the concrete had clipped the right-hand side of the SUV and crushed Jeffrey, Marjorie, and Sergeant Bilko.

  Jason Carmichael sat inside his vehicle, unable to move, shell-shocked and speechless. To his right, on the now cracked inside wall of the tunnel, was a small sign indicating the company who had worked on this particular section.

  Mancini Construction.

  12

  Friday, September 5 - 3:45 P.M.

  Jake got word that Dr. Kelsey had signed off on Lisa Marie’s body. Two blues were heading out to Cambridge to tell Lisa Marie’s parents their baby had been murdered. Jake called them off. He and Dickie were taking it.

  Bringing an investigation out into a gated community near Cambridge Square gave Jake pause to despise the ultra-rich. The townhouses they passed on the way were straight out of Architectural Digest magazine and the cars in driveways cost more than what most cops made in a year. A nun from India visiting Father John last year astutely observed, after Jake asked how she liked living in America, “You Americans, you like every-ting veddy large. Big home. Big car. Big stomach.”

  Jake looked over at his partner as they parked at the corner end of the Taylor’s horseshoe driveway. Dickie’s gut protruded tightly over the seat belt around him.

  Who could argue with the woman?

  “So how we playin’ this?” Dickie wanted to know.

  “You take the lead. I’ll sit back and watch the old man. At least until we figure them out.”

  “Spoke to a friend from the FBI last night. Incestual relationships that have gone on for years often involve extremely rare and extremely violent crimes. ‘Member that dude in California a few years back who fathered ten of his children’s children, then killed each one of them, one by one, posed their bodies in the house … left them for weeks. Several of them were dismembered. How ‘bout that sicko in Austria? Locked his daughter in the basement for—”

  Jake stopped him. “Yeah, okay. I get it, Dickie. We’ll see.” They walked up the pathway to the house. There was a line of strange looking flowers planted in beds of mulch so clean and weed-free the landscaping looked fake. “Let’s focus on what we need to do here. Nobody expects death to knock at the door.” They approached the archway of the front porch. Jake took a glance around the yard. “They expect their lives—because they have money—to be carefree.” He paused for a beat as Dickie rolled his eyes.

  “Ring the bell, Jake. Your resentment is obvious. Let it go.”

  “You’d buy incest?” Jake shook his head in disagreement. “You get anyone on that Rookie lead yet?”

  “Sure thing, Jake. Ring the damn bell already.”

  “That’s some car, huh.” Jake pointed toward the garage with his head.

  “Gotta special-order those.” Dickie stared at the red Ferrari. It was parked in front of the garage. They admired the car. But wondered why it wasn’t in the garage. Expensive car like that just sitting out in the elements.

  “Get a load of that, Dickie.”

  “What?”

  “You see the way the worker cleans out those gutters?” The guy was about twenty yards away, standing on a ladder, spraying the gutters with a power-washer. He wore dark blue khakis, a white shirt, his name, Manuel, embroidered in cursive on the front pocket. When he noticed Jake staring, he stopped, winked, then went back to work.

  Why was Jake so concerned with such trivial matters when they were here to tell Lisa Marie’s parents their baby girl was not missing, as the Taylors had been led to believe, but dismembered? The Taylor family was on the opposite side of the door going about a normal day, thinking their daughter had simply run away again. In a few seconds their lives would never be the same.

  “Hey, we leave out the details, got it?” Jake said. “A dead child is a dead child. The path to that end meaningless right now.” They were in search of information, Jake implied. Less the Taylors knew at this point, the better.

  “And why is it,” Dickie asked, “two hotshot detectives such as ourselves are out here telling these good people about their kid? Why not send a few blues last night?”

  Telling Lisa Marie’s affluent parents their daughter had been murdered was not something Jake had wanted to do himself. But reaction was everything. If the Taylors knew—or had dealings with someone who could have swiped the girl—it would show on their faces. Jake knew people hid things. Sometimes out of guilt. Other times because they didn’t know better. Wealthy people had a lot to protect.

  “The element of surprise, Dick. Back to basics here for the time being. It’s all we have at the moment.”

  “No, Jake. You’re wrong. We got teleforensics!” Dickie laughed, mocking Jake’s iPhone crime-solving app.

  “Funny. Hey, I mean that about Rookie—I want someone on his ass.”

  “Maybe tie him to Ray. I get it. Ray brought Rookie into the fold. Bring’em both down. Ray’s after your ass, anyway. Rookie is Ray’s eyes.”

  Jake’s mind raced.

  Mr. Taylor opened the door. Looked at the two of them. Then noticed the gold badge hanging from around Jake’s neck. “What’s this?” he asked. “Who are …?”

  Jake and Dickie looked down.

  The Taylor father dropped his head in his hands, bawling as if he had been waiting for this knock on the door for the past two years. The mother shook her head, one tear falling down her right cheek, a sad frown, her shoulders slumped. “My baby,” she said softly. “My baby girl is gone …”

  After allowing the Taylors to catch their breath, Dickie asked the standard set of questions. He took notes as Jake wandered around the downstairs, looking at knickknacks, family photographs, admiring some of the window-size paintings in the foyer.
/>   “We’re going to need all of her computers, cell phones, friends’ names.”

  “She had all that stuff with her,” the mother said. “When we filed a missing persons report days ago, they told us not to worry.”

  “We’re sorry, Mrs. Taylor.” Dickie was terrible at delivering bad news.

  Mr. Taylor did not speak.

  “Can I take a look in Lisa’s room, Mrs. Taylor? I hate to ask,” Jake said, “but it would be very helpful.” He kept his voice streamlined. Professional. Devoid of any emotion.

  “No one’s been in there, Detective, since she’s been gone,” the father said, speaking up.

  “Even better.” Jake headed up the stairs. He noticed a picture of Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, Lisa Marie, their other two kids, taken at an amusement park. They were wearing western outfits. The photo was in that rustic, yellowish black and white. Every household had one of these. The kids were young. Everyone seemed happy.

  “Hon,” Mrs. Taylor said to her husband, “go with the detective.”

  Dickie stayed with the mother downstairs while Jake and Mr. Taylor walked up the long, three-foot-wide, arcing staircase. Lisa Marie Taylor’s father was a Harvard professor who taught philosophy. He had been written about in many of the Christian journals because he believed religion needed to play a larger role in grammar through high school classrooms. He’d written books. But it wasn’t Harvard money—or his literary endeavors—that had made the Taylor family wealthy. Mrs. Taylor’s father, Artimus Raymore Samuels, took over a brewery in Boston opened at the turn of the century and turned it into one of the most successful ale companies in America.

  “Those flowers out front, you know what they’re called?” Jake asked as he and Mr. Taylor approached the top of he stairs. He had his hands in his pockets.

  Mr. Taylor had a balled-up fist to this mouth. “Lisa … she,” he had a hell of time getting the words out, “… she planted them. Called them Nightblooming Cacti, or something like that. They open up at night after the sun goes down.”

  A faint smell struck Jake as he and Mr. Taylor walked down the hallway toward Lisa’s bedroom. If you hadn’t been around the dead before you wouldn’t notice. It might instead smell like an expired mouse under a bureau. Or a family bathroom after a few days of the stomach flu.