Authors: Dave Zeltserman
Chapter 53
It was a quarter to eight when Bill arrived at Downtown Crossing. Along the way he had stopped at a dozen or so dumpsters and trashcans outside residences when it felt safe enough for him to look in them, but he wasn’t able to find a discarded jacket that he could use. He almost offered a panhandler a swap of jackets, but he’d had his bomber jacket since leaving the army, and couldn’t get himself to part with it.
He hesitated briefly as he walked down Washington Street, then making up his mind, took a detour and stepped down into Filene’s Basement. He found several racks of discounted winter coats but the ones he looked at still cost more than the cash he had on him and he couldn’t risk using a credit card. He also noticed people looking at him funny, which made him just want to get out of there. As he was leaving the store, a hefty-looking kid wearing a store security guard uniform stopped him.
“You pay for that?” the kid asked him.
Up close the kid looked like he was maybe in his early twenties. Big, with a round face, wispy blond hair and rosy cheeks, his body more flab than muscle. He stared with small, mean eyes at the laptop computer Bill carried. The security guard uniform looked fake and Bill had the idea that this was a scam, that the kid didn’t actually work there.
“You don’t sell laptops inside the store,” Bill told him flatly. He tried to push his way past him, but the kid stepped in front, blocking him. “I better take a look at that,” he demanded.
As the kid grabbed for the laptop, he stopped, frozen-like, his eyes growing large as he stared at Bill. It was as if he’d seen a ghost. Or a wanted murderer whose photo was everywhere. His lips moved soundlessly for a few seconds before any noise came out. “You’re that guy,” he finally sputtered. He took several steps away from Bill, his voice rising as he repeated himself, “You’re that guy!”
The kid looked uncertain as if he were trying to decide whether to make a run for it or be a hero. Bill didn’t give him a chance to make up his mind. He stepped forward and clocked the kid in the jaw with a straight right hand. The kid’s body sagged and his eyes fluttered. He wasn’t out, but he was close to it. Bill caught him and lowered him to the floor. A woman behind him started screaming. Whether she recognized him or not, he didn’t know or care. He just started running. Hard. Voices yelled out from behind him, pleading for someone to stop him. Nobody did.
Once he was out of the store and onto Washington Street, he pushed himself faster, zigzagging past the pedestrians clogging up the sidewalk for the eight o’clock rush to work. Reaching Summer Street, he took a hard right. He had a sense that one or more persons were chasing after him, but he didn’t risk slowing down to look behind him.
Up ahead he saw the entrance for the Downtown Crossing subway station, and he darted past a small mob of commuters leaving the station. He jumped the turnstile and caught his first break that morning by stepping onto a subway car as its doors were closing. For several agonizingly slow seconds the car stood still, then after a sputter, it began to move. Avoiding eye contact with other passengers, Bill turned and looked out the Plexiglas paneled door. If anyone had been chasing after him he couldn’t see them.
As he stood with his back to the rest of the car, he felt eyes on him. He didn’t dare turn around and give them a chance to get a better look at him. Feeling jittery and exposed, he absently rubbed his bruised knuckles along his right hand. He tensed as he waited for someone to grab him, but no one did. He could hardly believe it, but nobody had recognized him. As the adrenaline from the past few minutes wore off, he realized his wrist hurt also. Probably sprained it. Which was the least of his problems.
For what seemed like an eternity, the subway car crept along at a snail’s pace before arriving at its next stop. When the doors opened, he resisted his inner voice screaming at him to flee, instead stood where he was and felt the press of other passengers moving past him, then more of them pushing themselves into the subway car. He waited two more stops before stepping off at Back Bay station. When he emerged from the underground station, he was half-expecting to be met by a swarm of cops, maybe a SWAT team, but all he saw were people heading hurriedly off to work. No one paid him any attention. Even those who were carrying newspapers that had his picture covering a good part of the front page.
Bill stood silently watching them. Once his heartbeat slowed to something approaching the normal range, he joined them.
Chapter 54
Boxer felt like crap. Too many shots the other night. It didn’t help that he stayed out until last call and didn’t hit the sack until two-thirty in the morning with his alarm blasting in his ear at six. Jack O’Donnell, the city desk editor for the
Boston Tribune
, didn’t look like he was faring any better with his pasty complexion and bloodshot eyes. The guy also looked harried as hell and kept glancing at his watch. Boxer took a long sip of the high-octane coffee he’d brought with him and asked O’Donnell to go over again what happened the other day. The city desk editor did so, his grimace tightening to show how exasperated and put upon he was.
“Sorry to have to be inconveniencing you about a murder investigation involving one of your employees,” Boxer said dryly.
“Cut the sarcasm, detective,” O’Donnell said. “It’s only twenty past eight and I’m already half a day behind where I should be.” He held up his right hand showing a thick bandage around his wrist. “The only time I’ve been out of the office over the last twenty-four hours was to have my wrist x-rayed because I thought that paranoid delusional sonofabitch broke it. And guess what, I’m also now understaffed because of that paranoid delusional sonofabitch.”
“Paranoid delusional, huh?” Boxer asked.
“Yeah, I’d have to say so,” O’Donnell said with a queasy smile. “Bill accused me of being part of a conspiracy that was after him. That sounds paranoid, right? Then after killing one person and beating his ex-fiancée into hamburger meat he shows up at work as if nothing had happened. I’d have to say that’s being pretty damn delusional.”
“Any signs that Conway was having these types of problems?” Boxer asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe. He didn’t come in for a couple of days before this happened, and never gave me a good reason for it. It wasn’t like him.”
Boxer pointed to O’Donnell’s bandaged wrist. “How’d that happen?”
O’Donnell made a sour face. “Bill became agitated when he realized the police were coming. I tried grabbing his arm and he pulled some sort of kung fu move on me. I should’ve sucker punched him instead and knocked the crazy sonofabitch out. He pulled the same sort of kung fu shit on Phillips, our computer ops guy, and damn near broke his hip.”
“Did you know about Conway’s background?”
O’Donnell shook his head. “I knew he’d been in the army, but not about the rest of it.”
Boxer finished his coffee. He looked dejectedly at the empty cardboard cup, then crumpled it and made a basketball shot tossing it into a wastebasket on the other side of O’Donnell’s fishbowl office.
“I’d like a copy of the story Conway gave you yesterday,” Boxer said.
“I can’t do that.” The look on O’Donnell’s face turned more sour. “Bill must’ve grabbed it when he left. I couldn’t find it afterwards.”
Boxer gave O’Donnell a hard stare as he tried to figure out if the guy was leveling with him, because if he had the last story Conway wrote he sure as fuck wanted to see it. “How about the DVD then?” Boxer said.
O’Donnell shook his head. “I don’t know anything about a DVD.”
“Conway told me he left a DVD in your office.”
“If he did I don’t know anything about it,” O’Donnell said. “You’re welcome to look around for it.”
Boxer’s eyes narrowed as he stared at O’Donnell. “A guy who is wanted for murder comes into your office waving a story he just wrote and a DVD and you don’t know where either of them are?”
“Look, the last thing I expected was for Bill to show up yesterday,” O’Donnell said. His own bloodshot eyes met the intensity of Boxer’s stare. “When he came into my office, all I could think about was keeping him here until the police came. If he had a DVD with him I never noticed it. Go ahead, be my guest, and look for it.”
Boxer was about to take O’Donnell up on his offer when his cell phone rang. He listened to his captain on the other end, then left O’Donnell’s office and closed the door behind him. He kept his voice low as he asked whether they’d been able to identify the body. The last thing he wanted to do was alert anyone at the
Tribune
that another homicide victim had been discovered. He was told they hadn’t. Harrison gave him a location in South Boston near several blocks of deserted warehouses where a white male, around fifty, was found with his wrists and ankles bound and his throat cut. Boxer told him that he would head right out. He opened O’Donnell’s door again and asked the city desk editor if he could look for that DVD and give him a call when it’s found. O’Donnell shrugged and told him he’d give the office another look.
“Something break with Bill?” O’Donnell asked, clearly curious over the call the detective received. Boxer shook his head, told him it was a different matter. After he had left the
Tribune
building and was walking to his car he got another call. This one was about Conway being seen near Downtown Crossing, and that he had punched out a kid inside of Filene’s Basement who had tried to stop him.
“You’re fucking kidding me,” Boxer said. “When did this happen?”
“About fifteen minutes ago,” the other detective told him.
“When did the call come in?”
“Just now.”
Boxer’s mouth froze into a bare-fanged smile as he thought about it. Fifteen minutes is a long head start for downtown Boston. Conway could even be out of the city by now. “If uniforms pick him up give me a call, otherwise I’ve got a dead body to see,” he growled into his cell phone before flipping it shut.
Chapter 55
The central branch for the Boston Public Library was a block over from the Back Bay Station. Bill had a few tense moments when the security guard at the front entrance gave him a hard look up and down, but nothing came of it, and Bill now sat in a remote corner of the library taking advantage of the wireless Internet access that they offered. When he tried connecting to his email account he found the
Tribune
had disabled it. He shouldn’t have been expecting anything else, but still, a slow anger bubbled up within him, especially thinking of everything he’d gone through that morning just to check his damn email. Then as he realized that there would be no more messages forthcoming from his good pal,
G.
, and that there was no way for the two of them to contact each other even if they wanted to, the futility of his situation sunk in. His anger bled out of him, leaving a cold empty feeling behind. He sat for a long moment in despair and almost called Chuck Boxer. He took out his cell phone and imagined how if he gave himself up his lawyer might be able to use the courts to get to the bottom of what was going on at ViGen. In the end he accepted how unlikely that would be, and instead he put his cell phone away and pushed himself out of his chair.
On his way out of the library, Bill came across a coat that was left unattended. It was a ratty looking piece of material. Stained, dirty, with a thin lining that would offer little protection against the cold. From where he was standing he could smell an unpleasant garlicky odor from it. Still, it was exactly what he was looking for, something that would help him blend in with all the other people living out on the streets and keep others from wanting to risk eye contact with him. Bill looked quickly around and saw no one else in the area. He hesitated only a moment before leaving his jacket in exchange for this other one. This time as he left, the security guard gave the laptop he carried a more careful look, probably thinking that Bill must’ve stolen it, but he didn’t say anything.
Bill was half a block from the library when he saw a familiar-looking black Mercedes sedan race to the library entrance and stop in front of it. The same clean-shaven thug from before exited the car and moved fast towards the main doors, his face resembling a chunk of granite. Even though Bill’s email account had been disabled they must’ve been monitoring any attempt on his part to connect in, and they were able to identify where he tried to do it from. Bill almost headed back to the library. This thug would’ve thought he had the surprise on Bill, but he wouldn’t. While it would’ve been good to have the chance to beat some answers out of this thug, it wouldn’t work. The guy was probably armed, and anyway, he outweighed Bill by a good hundred pounds. Even if Bill were able to get the upper hand he knew no amount of beating would get anything out of the guy. He’d seen enough meatheads like him during his army days to know that. Worse, anyone passing by would recognize Bill and come to this thug’s defense, or at least send the cops to the scene.
Bill stood watching, his fists clenching and unclenching. Then, holding his jacket collar tight against his throat to protect himself from a frigid wind picking up, he continued on in the direction he was heading.
Chapter 56
That same night Bill was back under the overpass by eleven o’clock. He was dressed in more layers than the other night. Three shirts and two sweaters under the winter jacket he’d taken from the library; and with a pint-sized bottle of Jack Daniels, the cold wasn’t bothering him as much. Instead of lying on a pile of rags as he did previously, he sat crouched, watching the area around him.
Earlier that day, he had worked his way back to Charlestown, where he stashed his laptop, and was able to sneak back into Jeremy’s apartment unnoticed. He hadn’t slept in almost three days, and it all seemed to catch up to him as he found himself struggling to keep his eyes open. He made his way to the bedroom, and was probably out as soon as he dropped onto the bed.
He woke up with a start. A woman’s voice came from within the apartment, and he realized it must’ve been Jeremy’s neighbor, Kate, to feed Augustine. He could tell it was much later from how dark the room had gotten. He lay still as he listened to Kate scold Augustine over how much it smelled in the apartment, her telling the cat that she was going to have to clean the litter box and consider changing the food she was feeding him. The poor cat was being falsely blamed. The stench she was picking up came from Bill. His jacket, his clothing, his body. He heard her scraping up the litter box, then minutes later he could sense her standing outside the bedroom door; could imagine her hand on the door knob, and knew that she was wondering if the stench was somehow coming from inside the bedroom. He tensed, not quite sure what he would do if she came into the room. A minute passed, then finally he heard her footsteps walking away across the hardwood floor, and only then did he let out his breath. It wasn’t long after that that he heard the apartment door open and close.
It was a little past six o’clock at that time, and later when he was watching the local news he understood why Schlow’s Range Rover hadn’t been tracked the other night, and why that morning it was still in the strip mall where he had left it. Late that morning Schlow’s body was discovered a couple of blocks from where Bill had left him. His ankles and wrists were bound, his throat cut deeply enough that the police spokesman commented during their news briefing that the MIT professor had been nearly decapitated. Since then the Range Rover had been recovered, as was Schlow’s wallet that Bill had tossed away. The police were able to lift Bill’s fingerprints from both and were labeling him as their prime suspect for Schlow’s murder. Somehow none of that surprised Bill. After a quick dinner of the last frozen entrée left in Jeremy’s freezer, he headed out.
A little before midnight Bill spotted a familiar-looking man moving drunkenly towards the same area under the overpass where he and the other homeless were camped out. A hard grin tightened across Bill’s lips as he recognized the man as the same one who had robbed and beaten him the night before. He picked up a rag from the ground and wrapped it tightly around his fist, then walked over to the drunken homeless man and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Go fuck yourself,” the man slurred, a heavy odor of alcohol nearly overpowering the stench from his body. Bill tapped him again. This time the man tottered on his feet as he turned around, and Bill popped him in the mouth. The man went down as if he’d been shot.
“I want what you took from me,” Bill said.
The man’s mouth was a bloody mess. Red bubbles popped from his lips as he croaked out for Bill to go fuck himself. It was too much. Everything that had been happening was too much.
The homeless man lying by his feet with his busted mouth dissolved into a sea of redness, his voice blurring into a dull buzz. Bill was barely aware of kicking the man in the chest. How many times? Five? Six? He didn’t know. He heard it when the ribs cracked, but still didn’t connect the sound to what he was doing. Then the world came back to him. He stood breathing hard as he stared down at the man he had just brutally beaten, the man who now lay curled up clutching his chest, moaning miserably, but still croaking out through his ruined mouth for Bill to go fuck himself. Bill felt disgusted and ashamed as he knelt by this man and went through his pockets, first pulling out Schlow’s cell phone, then the eighty-seven dollars that were left from what was taken off of him the other night. He looked at the money gripped in his fist. With his hand still shaking he shoved the money back into the homeless man’s pants pocket.
“Go fuck yourself,” the homeless man croaked out between sobs.
Bill saw the others there watching him. He walked away and looked on as several other people shuffled over to the man that he had almost killed. They wiped the blood from his face and helped him into a more comfortable position. One of them handed him a bottle to drink from. During it all the man kept telling them in a low, raspy croak to fuck themselves. The newcomer there who had told Bill he saw angels and a devil stood and watched from a distance also. With a dopey grin he wandered over to Bill and told him the guy was an asshole and got what he deserved. “I don’t like him either,” he told Bill. “I saw what he did to you last night.” When Bill didn’t answer him, the man wandered away, the dopey grin still stuck on his face.
Bill took his cell phone from his pocket and keyed in the phone numbers that were programmed into Schlow’s phone. When he was done, he wiped down Schlow’s phone with a rag, then crushed it with his heel. He didn’t want any of the homeless people there using it and bringing the same spooks who’d been after him to the area. After that he moved so he’d be closer to where the van would park, if it came.
It was two hours later when a white van showed up. During those two hours Bill tried not to think of the rage that had blinded him when he nearly killed that man. He tried not to think whether it was possible that what Dr. Henry Schlow had told him could be the truth, that a murderous alternative consciousness of his was responsible for tying up Schlow and cutting his throat. He tried hard not to think of any of that, but he didn’t have much luck. Those thoughts kept nagging at him and made him near sick to his stomach.
Bill made sure he was lying on the ground when two men dressed in black windbreakers and slacks departed from the van, neither of whom Bill had seen before. If it had been either of the thugs he had earlier encountered he would’ve been in deep shit. He tried to appear as if he were asleep as they approached him, and he grunted something unintelligible when one of them nudged him with the toe of his shoe. Then both of them had him by his arms and were lifting him to his feet. Up close they looked like hospital orderlies.
“You know what planet you’re on?” one of the men asked him.
“Go fuck yourself,” Bill muttered as if his mouth were full of marbles.
The man chuckled at that, told his partner, “We’ve got another one of them.”
They half dragged him to the van while Bill moved in a slow, reluctant shuffle. It was the same sort of van that was used for his abduction, with the front separated from the back by a metal panel. Like the one he had been thrown into, it had two makeshift benches bolted to the floor to provide seating. After they had him settled on one of the benches, they went to collect more human guinea pigs, and ended up bringing back five more men. One of them was the man who saw angels. The others Bill recognized from the other night when he was handing out doughnuts. He had the sense that they recognized him too, but none of them said anything until the doors to the van were shut and the van was moving.
“You shouldn’t have done that to Paul,” said an ancient-looking man sitting opposite Bill. “He don’t mean nothin’ by what he says.”
Bill met the man’s unblinking gaze, said, “He used a brick to damn near bash my skull in last night. He robbed me.”
The man could’ve been in his seventies, could’ve been older. He was as narrow as a rail, his cheeks hollowed out, his eyes sunken. Only a few white wisps of hair remained on his liver-spotted skull. He nodded solemnly. “That’s cause you ain’t one of us,” he said. He looked away from Bill, shifting his eyes towards his folded hands which were mostly only gristle and blue veins. “You don’t got no right being there pretending you one of us.”
“Maybe I overreacted,” Bill admitted. “But he’ll live, and I left him the money he stole from me.”
None of them bothered responding to that. For several minutes the only noise that came from any of them was one of them sniffling, then the same man rubbing his jacket sleeve under his nose. Bill broke the silence by asking them if they knew where they were going. The one who saw angels opened his mouth to say something, but after a quick look at the other men’s faces he closed his mouth. None of the others made an attempt to answer him. Over the next fifteen minutes there was nothing but stony silence.
Then the van came to a stop.