Mystic River

Whitey Powers ambled over to them, flipping through his report pad as he nodded at Friel. "Lieutenant."

"Sergeant Powers," Friel said. "Where are we so far?"

"Preliminary indications put time of death at roughly two-fifteen to two-thirty in the morning. No signs of sexual assault. Cause of death was most likely the GSW to the back of the head, but we're not ruling out blunt trauma from that bludgeoning she took. Shooter was most likely a righty. We found the slug embedded in a pallet to the left of the victim's body. Looks to be a thirty-eight Smith slug, but we'll know for sure once Ballistics takes a look. Divers in the channel are looking for weapons now. We're hoping the perp might have tossed the gun or at least what he beat her with, which looks to have been a bat of some kind, maybe a stick."

"A stick," Friel said.

"Two BPD officers on the house-to-houses along Sydney spoke with a woman claims she heard a car hit something and stall out at one-forty-five A.M., roughly a half an hour before T.O.D."

"What sort of physical evidence do we have?" Friel asked.

"Well, the rain kinda fucked us there, sir. We got some pretty shitty footprint casts that may belong to the perp, definitely a couple belong to the victim. We pulled about twenty-five separate latents off that door behind the screen. Again, could be the victim's, the perp's, or just twenty-five people who have nothing to do with this and come down here at night to drink or take a breather during a jog. We got blood by the door and inside? again, some of it might be the perp's, might not. A lot of it definitely came from the victim. We got several distinct prints off the victim's car door. That's about it for physical right now."

Friel nodded. "Anything in particular I can report to the DA when he calls me in ten or twenty minutes?"

Powers shrugged. "Tell him the rain fucked my crime scene, sir, and we're doing the best we can."

Friel yawned into his fist. "Anything else I should know?"

Whitey looked back over his shoulder at the trail leading down to the door behind the screen, the last ground Katie Marcus's feet had touched.

"The lack of footprints pisses me off."

"You mentioned the rain?"

Whitey nodded. "But she left a couple. I'm willing to bet the house they were hers, anyway, because they were recent and she was digging her heels some places and springing off the balls of her feet in others. We found three, maybe four like that, and I'm pretty sure they belonged to Katherine Marcus. But the perp? Nothing."

"Again," Sean said, "the rain."

"Accounts for why we found only three of hers, I'll grant you. But not one of this guy's far as we can see?" Whitey looked at Sean and then Friel and then he shrugged. "Whatever. Pisses me off is all."

Friel pushed himself off the stage and clapped some grit off his hands. "All right, guys: You have a six-man task force of detectives at your disposal. All your lab work has been bumped to the head of the line and given priority status. You'll have as many troopers as you need for the grunt work. So, Sergeant, tell me how you plan to utilize all this manpower we've gotten for you in our wisdom."

"I suppose we'll talk to the victim's father now and find out what he knows about her movements last night, who she was with, who might've had a beef with her. Then we'll talk to those people, reinterview this woman said she heard the car stall out on Sydney. We'll Q-and-A all the winos they pulled out of the park and off Sydney, hope the tech support teams give us solid latents or hair fibers to work with. Maybe his skin is under the Marcus girl's nails. Maybe his prints are on that door. Or maybe he was the boyfriend and they had a spat." Whitey gave another of his patented shrugs and kicked at some dirt. "That's about it."

Friel looked at Sean.

"We'll get the guy, sir."

Friel looked like he'd been expecting something better, but he nodded once and patted Sean's elbow before walking away from the stage and down into the bowl of seats where Lieutenant Krauser of the BPD stood talking with his boss, Captain Gillis of the D-6, everyone giving Sean and Whitey their best "Don't fuck up" stares.

"'We'll get the guy'?" Whitey said. "Four years of college, that's the best line you can come up with?"

Sean's eyes met Friel's again for a moment and he gave him a nod that he hoped exuded competence and confidence. "It's in the manual," he said to Whitey. "Right after 'We'll nail the bastard' and before 'Praise the Lord.' You read it?"

Whitey shook his head. "Sick that day."

They turned as the coroner's assistant shut the back doors to the van and came around the driver's side.

"You got any theories?" Sean said.

"Ten years ago," Whitey said, "I'd be liking gang initiation rite. Now, though? Shit. Crime goes down, things get a lot less predictable. You?"

"Jealous boyfriend, but that's just by-the-numbers."

"Beats her with a bat? I'd say the boyfriend better have a history of anger-management problems."

"They always do."

The coroner's assistant opened the driver's door and looked over at Whitey and Sean. "Heard someone wanted to lead us out."

"That's us," Whitey said. "You pull ahead of us once we leave the park, but, hey, we're transporting next of kin, so don't leave her in the corridor when you get downtown. You know?"

The guy nodded and got in the van.

Whitey and Sean climbed in a cruiser and Whitey pulled it in front of the van. They headed down the slope between streams of yellow crime scene tape, and Sean watched the sun begin its descent through the trees, turning the Pen a rusty gold, adding a red glow to the treetops, Sean thinking if he were dead that's one of the things he'd probably miss most, the colors, the way they could come out of nowhere and surprise you, even though they could make you feel slightly sad, too, small, like you didn't belong here.

* * *

THE FIRST NIGHT Jimmy spent at Deer Island Correctional, he'd sat up all night, from nine to six, wondering if his cellmate would come for him.

The guy had been a New Hampshire biker named Woodrell Daniels who'd crossed into Massachusetts one night on a methamphetamine deal, stopped in a bar for several whiskey nightcaps, and ended up blinding a guy with a pool stick. Woodrell Daniels was a big meat slab of a man covered in tattoos and knife scars, and he'd looked at Jimmy and let loose this dry whisper of a chuckle that went through Jimmy's heart like a length of pipe.

"We'll see you later," Woodrell said at lights-out. "We'll see you later," he repeated, and let loose another of those whispery chuckles.