Mystic River

"We in?" Whitey said. "First try and everything?"

"We're in." Sean pulled back hard, taking the lock cylinder with him, getting a glimpse of the hole he'd left behind before the latch clicked free and the trunk lid rose up and that low-tide smell was replaced by something worse, a combined stench of swamp gas and boiled meat left rotting in a pile of scrambled eggs.

"Jesus." Connolly pressed his tie over his face and stepped back from the car.

Whitey said, "Monte Cristo sandwich, anyone?" and Connolly turned the shade of grass.

Souza was cool, though. He stepped up to the trunk, one hand pinching his nose, and said, "Where's the guy's face?"

"That's his face," Sean said.

The guy was curled in a fetal position, his head tilted back and to the side as if his neck were broken, the rest of his body curled in the opposite direction. His suit was top-shelf, his shoes, too, and Sean guessed his age at around fifty after a glance at his hands and hairline. He noticed a hole in the back of the guy's suit jacket, and he used a pen to lift the fabric away from his back. Sweat and heat yellowed the white shirt underneath, but Sean found a match for the hole in the jacket, halfway up the back, the shirt puckered into the flesh there.

"Got an exit wound, Sarge. Definite gunshot." He peered into the trunk for a bit. "I can't find the shell, though."

Whitey turned to Connolly as the man started to sway. "Get in your car and head back to the parking lot of the Last Drop. Inform the BPD first thing. We don't need a fucking turf war. Work your way out from where you found the majority of the blood in that parking lot. There's a good chance there's a bullet there somewhere, Trooper. You got me?"

Connolly nodded, gulping air.

Sean said, "Bullet entered the sternum through the lowest quadrant, almost dead center."

Whitey said to Connolly, "Get CSS down there and as many troopers as you can without pissing off the BPD. You find that bullet, and you personally accompany it to the lab."

Sean craned his head into the trunk and took a good look at the pulverized face. "Judging by the amount of gravel, someone rammed his face off the pavement until they couldn't ram no more."

Whitey put his hand on Connolly's shoulder. "Tell BPD they're going to need a full Homicide crew down here? techs, photographers, the on-call ADA, and the ME. Tell them Sergeant Powers requests someone who can give me a blood type on-scene. Go."

Connolly was elated to just get the hell away from the smell. He ran to his cruiser, had it in gear and fishtailing out of the lot in under a minute.

Whitey shot a roll of film around the outside of the car and then nodded at Souza. Souza slid on a pair of surgical gloves and used a slim jim to pop the passenger door lock.

"You find any ID?" Whitey asked Sean.

Sean said, "Wallet in his back pocket. Take some shots while I get my gloves on."

Whitey came around and photographed the body, then let the camera hang from the strap around his neck as he scribbled a crime-scene diagram in his report pad.

Sean pulled the wallet from the corpse's back pocket and flipped it open as Souza called from the front of the car: "Registration's in the name of August Larson of Three-two-three Sandy Pine Lane in Weston."

Sean looked down at the driver's license. "Same guy."

Whitey looked over his shoulder. "He got an organ donor card in there, anything like that?"

Sean searched through credit cards and video club cards, a health club membership ID, AAA card, finally found a Tufts Health Plan ID. He held it up so Whitey could see it.

"Blood type, 'A.'"

"Souza," Whitey said. "Call Dispatch. Put out an APB on David Boyle, Fifteen Crescent Street, East Buckingham. White male, brown hair, blue eyes, five-foot-ten, a hundred-sixty-five pounds. Should be considered armed and dangerous."

"Armed and dangerous?" Sean said. "I doubt it, Sarge."

Whitey said, "Tell that to trunk boy here."

* * *

BPD HEADQUARTERS was only eight blocks away from the tow lot, so five minutes after Connolly had left, a battalion of cruisers and unmarked cars came through the gates, followed by the City Medical Examiner's van and a CSS truck. Sean took off his gloves and stepped back from the trunk as soon as he saw them. It was their show now. They wanted to ask Sean any questions, fine, but otherwise, he was out of it.

The first Homicide dick out of a tan Crown Vic was Burt Corrigan, a warhorse from Whitey's generation with a similar history of blown relationships and bad diet. He shook Whitey's hand, the two of them Thursday night regulars at JJ Foley's and members of the same dart league.

Burt said to Sean, "You ticket this car yet? Or you going to wait till after the funeral?"

"Good one," Sean said. "Who writes them for you these days, Burt?"

Burt slapped his shoulder as he came around the back of the car. He looked in, took a sniff, and said, "Funky."

Whitey stepped up to the trunk. "We think the murder took place in the parking lot of the Last Drop in East Bucky on early Sunday morning."

Burt nodded. "Didn't one of our forensic teams meet your guys out there Monday afternoon?"

Whitey nodded. "Same case. You sent guys over today?"

"Few minutes ago, yeah. Supposed to meet a Trooper Connolly and search for a bullet?"

"Yup."

"You put a name out on the wires, too, right?"

"David Boyle," Whitey said.

Burt looked in at the dead guy's face. "We'll need all your case notes, Whitey."

"No problem. I'll hang with you for a bit, see how it plays out."

"You bathe today?"

"First thing."

"All right then." He looked over at Sean. "What about you?"

Sean said, "I got a guy in holding I want to talk to. This is yours now. I'll take Souza back with me."

Whitey nodded and walked with him toward their car. "We tie Boyle to this, might turn him on the Marcus murder. Get ourselves a twofer."

Sean said, "A double homicide ten blocks apart?"

"Maybe she walked out of the bar and saw it."

Sean shook his head. "Timeline's all fucked-up. If Boyle killed that guy, he did it between one-thirty and one-fifty-five. Then he'd have to drive ten blocks, find Katie Marcus just driving down the street at one-forty-five. I don't buy it."

Whitey leaned against the side of their car. "Yeah, I don't either."

"Plus, the hole coming out of that guy's back? It was small. Too small for a thirty-eight, you ask me. Different guns, different doers."