Home body, p.58
Home Body, page 58
He lay on his belly and crossed the grass like a lizard. When he’d slid over the edge of the lawn onto the rocks, I waited. Listened. There was no sound, no car door opening. I counted to ten and then slithered out and rumbled onto the rocks.
We crossed in a crouch, along the rocks, under the pier, stepping from stone to stone, looking for the darker patches of weed and mussels that would be wet and silent. It was slippery and we used our hands, scraping them on the barnacles. The tape was scoured from my splinted finger and I tore the splint off and left it in the rocks. And then we had crabbed along far enough, and were ready to go over the bank and up into the trees. I picked up a baseball-sized rock, big enough to break Mick’s thick skull. Put a smaller one in my pocket.
Clair crouched behind me with the shotgun ready.
I turned to tell him I was going up and over—and there it was, coming around the next point. A green light, the starboard bow of a boat, a white light at its stern. It was a quarter-mile offshore, moving close, the outboard purring faintly.
“They’re here,” I said, as a car door opened above us.
“Too late to get behind them,” Clair said. “Get down.”
We crouched against the bank as the boat moved closer. I heard the sound of feet brushing through grass and then a figure appeared on the pier to our left. It was Mick. He walked out ten feet and pulled his mask down, adjusted it over his eyes, and flashed a light. One long. Two short. The lights of the boat moved closer, the white hull of the Whaler visible now but not the people on board.
We watched as Mick flashed the light again, and this time the signal was returned from the boat. Mick turned and walked back up the pier, turned back to the water, and spoke into a phone.
“Looking good, my friends,” he said. “We had a change of players, but the plan’s the same. I’ll leave the item on the edge of the dock. You toss me mine. I’m going to stand on the dock and wait. I give it a quick check, you do the same. When both parties are satisfied that the terms have been met, we go home. Just like that. Nice, simple transaction.”
We heard him open the van door and close it. There was no sign of Vincent, and I wondered if he was in the backseat, whether he could make that shot with a pistol, whether he had something better. Or maybe this was the deal. Take the money, leave the two bodies, and run.
The boat was fifty yards out now, moving closer. I could see David standing at the helm, a dark baseball hat pulled low. Maddie was beside him, gripping the console in front of the wheel. The motor burbled and the boat approached and soon I could see their expressions, tense and afraid. And then they were closer, and Maddie took the wheel and David bent behind him and picked up the duffel. He moved toward the bow and stood there with the bag in front of him, like he was waiting to get off a train. The motor idled and the boat drifted on the dark water and Mick crossed above us and walked onto the pier, down the ramp, and onto the float. He placed the dark case from Monica’s car on the edge of the float and stepped back ten feet. The boat eased alongside and David reached down for the case, the boat still drifting. He unzipped the case and pulled out what looked like a notebook and riffled through it. Then he tossed the duffel toward Mick. It landed short and Mick bent to pick it up. He quickly unzipped the bag and dug through it. David had put the notebook back in the case.
And Mick pulled a gun from his waistband, said, “Sorry, Connelly. I changed my mind.” But before he raised the gun, Clair called out, “Drop it, or I’ll cut you in half.”
Mick didn’t drop it. Clair stood and fired one shot above the boat, fire spouting from the shotgun, a clap echoing across the water. He jacked another shell into the chamber.
“Last chance,” Clair said.
Mick eased down, the gun in his right hand, held out by the barrel. He laid it on the dock and then he turned slowly.
“Jesus,” he said through the mask. “It’s fuckin’ McMorrow. And he brought some muscle. I like you more all the time, Jack, you know that? You’re my kinda people, McMorrow.”
“Jack,” David said.
“Oh, my God,” Maddie said. “Oh, my God.”
“What do you want me to do?” David said.
“Just sit tight,” Clair said.
“Where’s Vincent?” I said.
We’d eased up onto the lawn and were moving toward the pier. Clair had the shotgun at his shoulder and kept it trained on Mick.
“Vincent?” Mick said. “He doesn’t like the country, Jack. He doesn’t like bugs.”
“I saw him kill Monica,” I said. “And I think Kathleen Kind.”
“Oh, no,” Maddie said, and she started to sob.
“Where is he?” I said.
Mick didn’t answer. David jumped out of the boat and fixed a bowline to a cleat, then scurried over and picked up Mick’s gun. He fiddled with it and then pointed it at Mick.
“You killed her?” he said.
“Easy with that thing,” Mick said. “You’ll hurt somebody.”
“Back away from him, David,” I said. “Don’t get too close.”
We were walking down the ramp, Clair first, me behind him, still carrying my rock. Maddie was sobbing at the helm of the boat, both hands on her mouth, her whole body shaking.
Clair said, “Keep your hands right up there. Way above your head. Now lie down on your belly, hands still up.”
Mick shook his head, said, “Just don’t let this amateur shoot me. I think he’s got the safety off.”
“Down,” Clair said. “One. Two—”
“You drop it,” said a voice behind us. “Or I’ll kill her right here.”
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It was Vincent, underneath the mask. He had his arm around Roxanne’s neck, a pistol jammed against her throat. He was walking her across the lawn from the trees. They moved stiffly, like it was a three-legged race.
“Drop it, I said,” Vincent screamed. “Lay it right down.”
Clair lowered the shotgun. David dropped the pistol to his waist. Mick stepped up to Clair, took the shotgun from him, and turned and pointed it from the hip at David.
“You, too, moneybags,” he said.
David did a knee bend and left the gun at his feet. Roxanne and Vincent were on the pier now, looking down at us. I could see that Roxanne was crying. I held the rock behind my back.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Just be calm.”
“Sure, it’s okay,” Mick said. “Keep telling yourself that. Everything’s great. Toss the rock in the water, Jack, and it’ll be even better.”
I did, and it made a deep ka-plock and a splash. Mick motioned for Clair and me to stand on the end of the float with David. It rocked gently as we walked. The boat bobbed up and down, the outboard still idling, Maddie trembling now, chewing on her lip.
“Just like walking the plank,” Mick said. “Just like pirate days. When I was a kid, I loved pirates. Read all about ’em. Blackbeard and Captain Kidd. Hey, Jack. We probably won’t write my story, will we? Too bad, huh. Well, I gave you your chance. You decided to go with these rich assholes. Shanty Irish underneath, too, no matter how much you dress ’em up. That’s what my dear mum used to say.”
Vincent eased Roxanne along the ramp and stopped at the end.
“We’ll keep her separate,” Mick said. “Awful lot of work for two hundred and fifty grand, don’t you think? I told Kathy there, I’m not going all the way up to Maine to pick up this merchandise for ten grand. You nuts? And I said, ‘Lady, just ’cause you killed some little North End skirt doesn’t mean you can push me around.’ ”
“Angel?” I said.
“My God,” David said. “Why would she—”
“Hell if I know. But it’s good to know who you’re working for, I always say. I had to peel away a couple of layers and there she was. Nice-looking lady, too. Was she Swedish or something? Anyway, from what I can figure, Angel was squeezing you and it worked so good, she decided to squeeze the ice lady there, too. If I were you, I woulda kept a closer eye on the books. I think the ice lady was skimming. But for Angel there, it was a bad idea, this squeeze play number two. So if it had been up to me, the price woulda been half a million, at least. What’s it to you, Connelly? You don’t even know how much money you got. Worth it to keep the world from knowing you whacked your brother, right, Mrs. Connelly?”
“Shut up,” David hissed.
“Hey, I didn’t know what this was all about until just now, when I was sitting up in the car there, reading your little diary thing. Killing your brother—now that’s gotta be heavy. I mean, me and Vincent, we’re no altar boys, but we never killed anybody in our own family. I mean, that takes iron balls, except you ain’t got any. Must have an iron—”
“Shut up, you filthy piece of shit,” David said.
I reached into my pocket and eased out my rock.
“Sticks and stones, Connelly. I just want to know what it’s really worth to you to get that book back. I mean, word gets out that your old lady here, she not only popped her brother, but she made him look like a pussy, too, with this suicide stuff. There goes the kid’s rep. I mean, who would shoot himself in front of his baby sister? People musta thought he was a real wingnut, and turns out he wasn’t. I mean, who thinks their little sister is gonna—”
“No,” Maddie shrieked.
She had a flare gun, bright orange plastic, and pointed at Mick. Vincent said, “No,” but she pulled the trigger. A pop and Mick shouted and put his hand to his face and something was hissing and burning on the deck of the float. Clair was on him, and Vincent fired once and the windshield on the boat shattered. Maddie dropped and Roxanne shoved Vincent and he grabbed her by the head and flung her against the railing. She fell hard and Clair fired and Vincent spun backward and crumpled, his gun flying into the water. Mick grabbed the barrel of the shotgun and Clair turned and kicked him in the groin but Mick held on, and I lunged for him but kicked the pistol along the deck and he dropped and grabbed it, still holding the barrel of the shotgun. I had him by the throat and he put the pistol to the side of my head.
Clair hacked at Mick’s arm, and the gun turned and Mick fired, and a black hole appeared in Clair’s shirt at his shoulder blade and he gasped and fell to his knees and I bulled Mick onto his back. I pounded his face with the rock and blood came from his mouth, his nose, and then he bellowed and got me in a bear hug, his blood on my face, and rolled both of us off the float against the boat.
The water was black and cold, an awful darkness, and I spun with Mick still hanging on to me, dragging me down. We hit bottom headfirst and I needed to breathe and he was tearing at my shirt, kicking at me, pushing me down as he tried to claw his way to the surface. He went up first, his knees slamming my belly, my chin, and I spun and he kicked me in the spine and my legs went numb. I came up underneath him and he was thrashing, clawing at me, and then he hit something and went still. I shoved him away and paddled sideways, my lungs bursting.
And I hit something hard just as I was about to explode for breath. It was light and smooth, the bottom of the boat, and I clawed my way along it, fingernails scraping at the hull, and then I was out, into the air, gasping, sucking air in. One breath and back down I went, my legs hanging limply underneath me like sacks of sodden bones.
I clawed my way up and something sharp hit my head, cut it. I pushed away and the motor revved, the propeller churning the water, inches from my belly. I paddled back and hit the boat with my head, felt warm blood running down from my forehead.
I was on the far side of the boat, and couldn’t see them. “Pull me up,” I said. “Somebody pull me up.”
The boat rocked, like somebody had just gotten off of it. Then it rocked again like someone had jumped on. Maddie leaned over and saw me but the boat was moving and I lunged upward, got a hand over the gunwale.
“Stop,” I shouted. “Stop!”
And then I was falling away. The motor revved and the wake washed over me, black and cold but scalding at the same time, and I was scrabbling with my arms to keep my head up and the boat was leaving, then circling and coming back and another wake washed over me, into my mouth. And I coughed and gagged and said, “Help,” and the bow brushed over me, and I grabbed for a ring on its underside and got a finger through it and held on.
The motor was idling, and I heard them.
“Those two are dead,” David said. “The big guy never came up. Clair, he might not make it, and she’s just lying there and—”
“David,” Maddie said.
“Nobody has to know,” David said.
“David, my God. What are you saying?”
“Two people dead over this? Angel, too, and Monica. My God, it’ll be everywhere.”
“Help,” I said. “Get me out.”
“Baby, I don’t want this to happen to you. We’ll go. We’ll go to Mexico or Costa Rica or anywhere. I know people who can help us. You don’t have to be blamed all over again. Nobody else has seen the journal, or this. Nobody else knows.”
“David, I can’t stand any more secrets. Mom and Dad, they tried to protect me, and look what—”
“It’s going to be a nightmare, Maddie. A nightmare.”
“It can’t be any worse than the nightmares I’ve been having all these years, the nightmare I’ve been living.”
“Maddie—”
“David,” Maddie said. “You can’t stop this. Get the ladder and get Jack out.”
There was a pause where neither of them spoke and then I heard a clattering and a ladder appeared over the side of the boat.
“Get on the phone, Maddie,” David said. “Call an ambulance. Call the police.”
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Roxanne was okay. Clair, not so good, but going to make it. Mick and Vincent died there on the shore of the bay, paying a price for breaking their own rule: You don’t leave your turf. Monica didn’t make it, but Kathleen Kind did, though as is the case with so many blessings, this one was mixed.
Her story, told to Cade and Sullivan in a hospital room at Mass General, was that David must have killed Angel—that Angel tried to get Ms. Kind to help her with a scheme to steal from the Connellys’ foundation accounts. Angel threatened to have Ms. Kind killed by the Mafia when she refused and pledged to go to the police. Ms. Kind said it was Monica who found the journal in Angel’s things. Angel found it in the Connellys’ bedroom when she was there in bed with Tim Dalton, Monica said. She decided the best revenge was to bleed more money out of the Connellys and then let the secret out. Ms. Kind said she went to Maine with her hoping to dissuade her at some point along the way.
Ms. Kind didn’t expect that Monica’s criminal friends would show up, too.
That was the story for about a week. And then the bean counters found that Ms. Kind had been skimming from grant awards for years, a few thousand at a time, for a total of $420,000, and counting. The forensics people matched DNA from skin under one of Angel’s fingernails with Ms. Kind’s blood. Police went back to Ms. Kind, who by then was in physical rehab, and asked if she’d like to change her story.
She said no.
They said the DNA alone would hang her.
Ms. Kind said people like the Connellys had no respect for her, they used people like they were appliances, they didn’t even really see her after all the years she’d worked so hard for them.
She was invisible, she said. And then she said she wanted to talk to her lawyer.
Cade said Ms. Kind was one cool customer, that you could almost see the wheels turning inside her shaved head.
Tim Dalton folded more easily. He admitted to sleeping with Angel at the Connellys’ house in Blue Harbor, but said he hadn’t hurt anybody. His wife didn’t agree, and filed for divorce. Dalton said he didn’t know Angel had taken anything from the Connellys’ bedroom, but Cade and Sullivan were threatening to charge him with being an accessory.
As for Clair, he couldn’t cut wood. The bullet had passed through his shoulder just under his collarbone and had damaged the muscle systems there. He was in physical therapy, working to raise his right arm above his chin. He said it was no big deal, and besides, if we hadn’t gone along, the Connellys would certainly have been killed. I hobbled around with a cane for a few days, one leg still numb from the bang to my spine. The whole story came out, but I didn’t write any of it.
Instead, with Myra’s blessing, I gave three interviews, to reporters from the Times, the Globe, and the Portland Press Herald. I talked about David and Maddie, Mick and Vincent. Roxanne, with a special dispensation from the higher-ups, told the reporter about Maeve and Devlin. The above-the-fold headline in the Globe said hoods, grifters, and a terrible secret: shadowy figures from past and present haunt connelly camelot. In the Times, the headline was low on page one, all editions: connelly secret takes four lives, haunts a family. The Press Herald’s choice: wealth and power no match for a family skeleton.
Maddie and David were interviewed at length. They said they regretted the tragic loss of life, but were glad to have the matter of Maddie’s brother’s death out in the open. Maddie said it had been a terrible burden to carry, all those years. She was photographed at the Boston house, in the third-floor study where I’d answered the phone that fateful night. Maddie said the lesson to be learned was that the truth is always preferable to a lie, even if the lie is told with the best of intentions. David announced that the Sky Blue Foundation would give $5 million to Boston Children’s Hospital for the purpose of founding a center to treat children with psychological trauma.
I wondered if Maeve would be the first patient.
The Hampshire County district attorney said he would not prosecute, and considered the case of Clinton Archer Boswell to be closed. And in the end, I told only two people about the conversation the Connellys had on the boat while I was in the water.
Clair and Roxanne.
