THE DEAD SOUL: A Thriller

by M. William Phelps

  The Ted Williams Tunnel into East Boston was closed because of the collapse, inspections and repairs. So Jake took the Tobin Bridge over the Mystic River into Chelsea and Revere.

  Cane hung out at a pool hall inside a bowling alley near Malone Park on Warren Avenue in Revere. Jake knew he’d find him there, probably trying to con some insurance exec stopping in for happy hour—tie loosened, top button undone, the dude half-drunk—out of his mortgage payment.

  The rain started as Jake got off the Tobin. He drove into the end of town where the oil tankers docked and that smell of fresh gasoline enveloped the inside of his car.

  Cane’s past mattered little to Jake. The fact that he was tied to a Cambridge homicide just recently was where Jake got interested. One of the victim’s legs had severe lacerations, as though someone had taken a knife to her. Cane was never a suspect in the sense that he killed the woman. But during his last bit, a three-year run for turning over a Korean grocery and beating the owner into a stupor, he claimed to know a guy who had some information about the case. No one ever followed up after D-12 failed to locate the snitch. But Cane convinced the DA to reduce his sentence for the info. Now was a good time for Bags Cane to pay for that free ride.

  Jake unloosened his tie and unbuttoned the top button on his shirt, walked in, and spotted Cane by the video games in the back of the bar. He passed butcher-block Formica tables, chipped and carved up with patrons’ initials, in between vinyl red booths with silver duct tape covering the rips. The bartender stared at Jake with a look that said he had five minutes.

  Cane played an old-school, beat-up Pac Man machine from the eighties pushed up against the back wall. Jake snuck up behind him while that annoying wok-wok-wok-wok-wok sound followed the Pac Man around as it gobbled up blinking dots.

  The jukebox was in the middle of Frampton’s “Do You Feel Like I Do” and that strange guitar part where Frampton talks and plays his guitar at the same time.

  “No kids around to swindle out of their paper route money tonight, Bags?” Jake put his arm around Cane’s shoulder, gave him a strong squeeze, letting him know who was in charge. Cane wore a jean jacket, cut up and greasy. He had a blue bandana wound thick around his head like a gangbanger. A wallet chain hung from his back pocket. He got nickname Bags from the Reilly brothers in junior high. Because Cane’s dime bags of weed were more like nickels, the name stuck.

  Cane didn’t turn around. He looked at Jake in the reflection of the glass covering the screen. “Detective Cooper, hey, man. Long time, no see.”

  “You’re rockin’ that whole nineteen-eighty-three Bruce Springsteen, ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ look, huh. Doesn’t suit you well, Bags.” Jake turned to see who was watching. Some white dude with dreadlocks, wearing a visor cap, a pencil-thin mustache, was talking on his cell, staring down at the floor. The bartender was playing a game of liar’s poker with two regulars sitting at the bar. It was clear to Jake no one gave two shits about Bags Cane.

  Jake certainly had no respect for guys who dealt dope to kids. Cane had started with weed, graduated to crack, acquired his master’s in heroin. Real scumbag, Jake knew firsthand. Cane was a guy who needed to be manhandled with that same street mentality he responded to.

  “Let’s go, Bags. Outside.”

  Hanging over the pool table behind them was one of those square Schlitz lights left over from the seventies. Two guys stood with pool sticks butted to the floor. They drank longneck Buds. Laughed about something. Near them, some chick argued with her boyfriend on a pay phone.

  “Come on, Jake. I ain’t done nothing.’ ”

  “Outside, Bags. We need to talk.”

  “I’m playing a game here …”

  Wok-wok-wok-wok-wok. Frampton was guitar-talking those words from his song still.

  “Looks like you got high score, too.” Jake smiled. “That’s too bad.” He grabbed Cane by the ear and pulled him toward the door. “Do you feel like I do, Bags?”

  No one paid attention.

  “Jake, man, what are you doin’? You cannot embarrass me like this. Ouch, man. Stop it.”

  “Long time, Bags. How ya been?” When they got outside, Jake gave Cane a good push and he stumbled on the sidewalk. Almost fell. Jake looked both ways down the block. “Over there.” He pointed. “Lean up against my car.”

  “What the hell do you want, anyway? I’m clean, man.”

  Jake patted Cane down, just to be sure. “Tell me about the tip you gave in turn for that get-out-of-jail-free card the DA handed you. The Cambridge case.”

  “Not sure I know what you mean.” Cane leaned with his back up against Jake’s car. A neon OPEN sign in the front window of the bar flashed red on his face. Part of its glare shone red along Jake’s blue suit. It was dark. Cold. The streets had a shiny glaze from a misty drizzle. The music was still playing inside the bar, but it sounded muffled standing outside.

  “I’m going to say this once more. Then I’m going to hurt you, simple as that. That tip you gave D-Twelve detectives to get time chewed off your last bit. The Cambridge murder, asshole. The one where the dude got all crazy with a knife. You have five seconds.”

  Jake walked over and, without warning, slugged Bags in the face.

  “Shit, Coop … what was that for?” Cane said, spitting blood on the ground, holding his mouth.

  Cooper cocked his fist back and held it.

  “Oh, that one,” Bags said. “Yeah, I think I recall now something about it.” He kept rubbing his ear and chin. “You really hurt my earlobe, Jake, you know that. Now my chin, man … what the fuck.”

  Jake moved closer. “Come on. Don’t fuck with me here, Bags. It’s late and I’m in no mood.”

  “Look,” Cane glanced right and left to make sure no one was watching them, “there’s this guy out in Framingham, weird dude … likes to order the whores with limps and weird sorts of things wrong with them. Dead eye. Freakish scars. He’s whacked, man. Screwed in the head. He, like, keeps knives and stuff on the walls next to posters of movies like Hostel and Saw. Collects serial killer memorabilia. Heard he wanted to pay ten K for any piece of clothing related to that JonBenet case. One of Charlie Tex’s girls ran out of his house all freaked out was what I heard in the joint. She couldn’t go back on the street for months. Said she’d never go back to the dude’s house. I guess he wanted to pay her all sorts of money to cut on her legs as he was getting off. He showed her these snuff photos he said he bought on eBay. Called them four dead blondes. You know, like that band from the eighties—”

  Jake interrupted. “Name?”

  “Look, I don’t know. All I—”

  Jake moved nose to nose with Cane. “Name, Bags.”

  “I just know where he lives, man. Come on. Back off.”

  Bags pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Jake grabbed it, took one out of the sleeve, crumpled the pack and tossed it.

  After lighting the cigarette, Jake pulled out a pad from an inside pocket. “Draw me a map. If it’s wrong, I’m coming back.”

  25

  Monday, September 8, 7:52 P.M.

  What the mailman didn’t know about Mary O’Keefe was that she was a two-time all-American swimmer for Northrop High School before an illness saddled her. Not that she could swim to shore. But what if Mary had been able to finagle one of the small life rafts free from its ties? Several minutes had passed, he quickly realized, since he had taken his eyes off his victim. That was plenty of time for Mary to untie a raft and jump into the water.

  “Bitch!” he screamed into the darkening skies above him, the stars now beginning to shine. “You are going to wish you …”

  Mary was not afraid of the water. She could probably find her way somewhere. Maybe not back to the harbor. But damn it all, she might be able to find life again by morning. She had no chance aboard The Grand Pause. Mary was a survivor. She needed to do whatever she could. God’s plan or not, she wanted to live. This was all rather clear to the mailman now that she was gone.

  After the splash
, he ran over and checked on the life rafts.

  All were accounted for.

  He panicked. Looked down into the water. Anxiety rose in him. From one side of the boat to the other, he walked the deck. Held his forehead. Scolded himself.

  “Mary?”

  Where was she?

  “Mary? Mary?”

  Nothing.

  He paced. Rubbed his temples. Shouted. “Bitch. Bitch. Bitch. I am going to find you. Then I am going to gut you from belly button to throat and watch you bleed. You should have never done this!” Spittle projected from his mouth as he screamed over the side of the boat. “Do you realize what you’ve done? Oh, Mary, I was going to be nice. I was going cut your spinal cord first so you didn’t feel anything—‘a poor man’s epidural,’ the coroner would call it at the morgue. But now you will suffer. You bitch. How could you do this.”

  With his favorite knife in hand, the mailman walked back and forth, pacing. He needed to figure out what to do. He had lost control of the situation. It was the first time he had felt a sense of losing control since he started killing. And he didn’t much like it.

  The furnace. His hands tied behind his back. The Teacher.

  “Don’t hurt me, no …”

  What the hell happened? He let Mary O’Keefe have a little bit of freedom and she took advantage of it. Damn, she had lied about being seasick. She had fooled him.

  He thought of sitting down, cutting his thigh deep, teaching himself a good lesson. It would relieve the pain. But as he put the knife to his skin and began, an idea stopped him.

  He stood. Found his search light. Scanned the water around the boat, lighthouselike, paying careful attention to anything in the water that moved. A ripple. A splash. Any noise.

  He realized rather quickly, however, that seeing a person out on this water at this time of the night, you had a better chance of reaching up and touching the stars.

  He had let his guard down. Damn-it-tall!

  Dropping the light. “Mary!”

  What would it hurt, he thought, not tying Mary O’Keefe up way out here? How far could she go? He had control of the radio. He padlocked the life rafts. No one was around for miles. All his weapons were locked up. She had vomited most of the way out here, for crying out loud.

  There was nothing but water.

  “Mary?”

  Where there’s a will ...

  And now his next victim was gone. Poof! Swallowed up by the darkness. Mary O’Keefe was going to ruin everything.

  26

  Monday, September 8, 8:09 P.M.

  There was a pulse of discontent and anger surging through the mailman’s veins as he wondered how he was going to fix this problem.

  “Mary … oh, Mary … where are you?” It was a game now. He could not let the young woman know that he was in stage-four panic mode. So he mocked.

  “Mary?” He talked slow and peaceful.

  Rain came down heavily, large droplets drenching the deck of The Grand Pause, making loud popping noises on the fiberglass. Off in the distance the sky brightened in flashes as lightning zapped the water in near perfectly staggered Harry Potter bolts.

  The mailman stopped. Another idea. This one better.

  He stood with his hand on the ignition key.

  No.

  Yes. Turn on the engines and make a series of passes around the area. He thought about this while grinding his teeth. His temples, two small drum skins, pulsating like a frog’s throat.

  He was just about ready to crank the engines over, when …

  8:15 P.M.

  Mary O’Keefe was underneath The Grand Pause, floating with the slow, up and down motion of the swells. Her toes were numb. Her blonde hair as soaked and salty as algae. Despite the grim outlook she faced, Mary relied on the same faith that had gotten her through all those lonely nights in her room by herself, rehabilitating from that bout of mono.

  “ ‘Seek good and not evil. Hate evil and love good.’ ”

  She whispered passages from the Old Testament to herself she had memorized as part of a penance Father John had once given her.

  The back of Mary’s head was inches away from one of the engine’s two window-fan-like propellers. She didn’t know how close she was to having the back of her scalp peeled off by the blade—a sharp knife through the end of a watermelon. As much as Mary O’Keefe knew about swimming, she knew nothing about boats. She could not see two feet in front of herself out here in the darkness. She’d found a pocket of space inside the engine cavity. It was enough to keep her head above water while holding on to a steel bracket. Yet unbeknownst to her, the back of Mary’s head was in the direct path of the propeller.

  8:25 P.M.

  The mailman started to crank the ignition key to the right. The engine turning over once would provide enough power to the engines to slice a good chunk of Mary’s head clean off.

  No … wait …

  Another idea stopped him.

  The mailman lowered the rescue boat, a small rubber raft, down into the water.

  A splash.

  He climbed onto it with a search light, then tied the small boat to the stern of the main vessel with two hundred feet of rope. He used an electric trolling motor to maneuver his way around The Grand Pause.

  Mary stayed still as a bobber.

  “Come on, Mary. It’s over. I will find you.” He sounded as if he and Mary were playing a friendly game of hide-and-go-seek. “I tell you what, Mary, if you give yourself up, I’ll go easy on you.”

  He laughed.

  There were quiet splashes of waves cresting and falling over. Gulls squawked overhead, but he couldn’t see them. The rain had stopped. A white beam of light from the moon trembled reflectively across the water. The mailman focused on it. The menacing shadow clouds were gone. Tomorrow was going to be a beautiful day.

  Mary was out here somewhere. He could almost smell her cheap perfume.

  “Come on, Miss O’Keefe. You’re a million miles from nowhere.” He was twenty-five yards south of the main vessel. His searchlight passed over Mary’s head twice already.

  8:34 P.M.

  Mary stayed composed. She thought about what to do. As she let go of the bracket to rub the salt from her eyes, a great swell came up and pushed Mary out to sea. She swam, pumping her legs with all her might. Her teeth chattered. All she thought about was dying out here, in the water, alone, without a hand from God. She’d heard drowning wasn’t such a bad way to go. It was like being drugged, she’d read. You delight in the euphoric nature of a slow death after accepting your fate and allowing that first full breath of water to fill your lungs.

  She heard him. “Mary?” That light again. A flash. It scanned over her head, just missing her. “Mary O’Keefe. Now you come back home to me, darling, so we can finish what we started.”

  “ ‘Let justice surge like water.’ ” Mary prayed. She tasted salt on her lips. Her eyes stung. A cut on her elbow burned as though rubbing alcohol had been poured on it.

  She saw him motor around to the bow. With his back to her, in one quick move, Mary gave everything she had, swam out a few feet, hopped up on the back of the boat deck, then ran for the steering console.

  Start the boat and take off.

  It would work. She had thought it through.

  Yet what Mary had failed to consider was that he had taken the keys with him.

  The mailman was crazy—yes. Stupid—no.

  Mary looked around in dread. Where was he? She couldn’t see him. He had turned off the light.

  Pray.

  “ ‘The man brought me back to the entrance to the temple, and I saw water coming out from under the threshold.’ ” Tears ran down Mary’s face. Her whole body shook. She kept repeating the psalm.

  8:45 P.M.

  He stood quietly at the bow. Mary had her back to him, her head down, hands on the steering wheel. When she turned, Mary O’Keefe dropped to her knees.

  He wiped a wrist across his forehead, aimed the crossbow at Mary’s chest.r />
  “I told you, Mary O’Keefe, you cannot hide from me out here.”

  That soldering iron in his hand. “If you say anything at all,” the Teacher breathed in his ear, “I will finish what I started.”

  He squinted one eye, brought the bow shoulder level, aimed it at Mary’s heart, pulled the trigger.

  Mary closed her eyes, her lips moving in one final prayer.

  For safekeeping, he walked over, picked Mary’s limp body up, exposing the right side of her neck, and slit her throat.

  The blood gushed. A stream of it, like a burning wick, ran down a groove on the deck of the boat. White against red. Such a contrast.

  “This is the cup of my blood,” he shouted. He dipped two fingers into Mary’s exposed larynx, then wiped the blood across his face, underneath both eyes. He stood still. Then took out his filleting knife and sharpening steel—that long, round tubular wandlike apparatus chefs use at carving stations—and ran the blade across the grooves.

  Confident his knife was sharp enough, he looked down at Mary. Before making that first cut on her leg, he felt a strong sense of letting go. Such joy. A numbing high, as if he’d taken a tranquilizer.

  The dawn of a new day. I win.

  After the initial buzz of the kill wore off, every splash of blood on the boat irritated him. He knew it was going to take the rest of the night to get the deck clean. He’s be on his hands and knees, scrubbing and cursing Mary.

  Then again, what did it matter?

  As he rested the edge of the knife on Mary’s shin, he knew what he had to do with Mary’s body once he was finished. It would send a direct message to those investigators he had plastered all over the walls of his living room. Yes, he was going to speak to them now. It was time to say something. Mary had pushed him into it.